Harriet Rumgay of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and colleagues from ten countries presented global epidemiological estimates of oral cancer, according to which nearly a third of these tumors are caused by the use of smokeless tobacco products and chewing betel nut (Areca catechu) seeds. The researchers used data from national surveys on current consumption levels of these products and associated oral cancer risks from the medical literature to calculate incremental population risk estimates. These estimates were applied to national incidence estimates of these tumors from the Cancer Today database for 2022. The results were published in The Lancet Oncology.
An estimated 390,000 cases of oral cancer were diagnosed globally in 2022. Calculations showed that just over 120,000 of these cases, or 30.8 percent (95 percent confidence interval 29.6–31.9 percent), were associated with smokeless tobacco use and betel nut chewing. Seventy-seven percent of these cases occurred in men. The greatest contribution of smokeless tobacco and betel nut chewing to the incidence of oral cancer was observed in Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, as well as South and Southeast Asia. More than 108,000 cases, or 90.2 percent, occurred in lower-middle-income countries.
