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 In 1999, nearly one in three children who died of cancer had
leukemia, while brain cancer caused the deaths of one in four.
By 2014, the numbers had reversed, researchers found comparing death
rates from pediatric cancers in these years.
"Forms of leukemia that a generation ago were almost universally
fatal are now almost universally curable," said Sally Curtin, an
author of the report, in a telephone interview.
Overall, cancer death rates for children dropped 20 percent from
1999, continuing a trend that started in the mid 1970s, according to
the National Center for Health Statistics study.
Among 100,000 youth ages one to 19, cancer killed 2.28 in 2014.
Other common sites of fatal childhood cancers included the bone and
articular cartilage, thyroid and other endocrine glands and
mesothelial and soft tissue. Combined with brain cancer and
leukemia, these accounted for 81.6 percent of all childhood cancer
deaths in 2014, the report said.
"The declines were broad, across all the age groups, males and
females, for both white and black children,” Curtin said. "That in
and of itself is noteworthy because so many health outcomes have
disparities."
She noted that brain cancer deaths held stable as leukemia deaths
dropped.
In 2014, 445 children died from pediatric leukemia, down from 645 in
1999, the CDC reported.
Deaths from childhood brain cancer, however, increased slightly from
516 in 1999 to 534 in 2014, the study found.
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"For pediatric brain tumors in particular, we have not made
significant headway at all," said Katherine Warren, head of
pediatric neuro-oncology at the National Cancer Institute.
She said childhood brain cancer is more difficult to treat, in part
because the blood-brain barrier protects the central nervous system
from toxins. This makes it more difficult to deliver chemotherapy.
"With leukemia, you are giving the therapy directly into the blood
and hence to the bone marrow which is exactly where the cancer is,"
she said, calling for more research into childhood brain cancers.
"We have learned over the past decade or so that childhood tumors
are significantly different from adult tumors,” she added.
(Reporting by David Beasley; Editing by Letitia Stein and Andrew
Hay)
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