TUESDAY, March 29, 2005 (HealthDay News) -- The fact that older teens and young adults with cancer seldom participate in clinical trials may be part of the reason they have lower survival rates for some cancers than either children or older people, researchers report.
The last 25 years has seen large improvements in cancer survival rates overall, especially among elderly, middle-aged and very young people. However, over that same period, statistics show little improvement in survival rates for those 15 to 45 years old.
Researchers at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston concluded that, "based on [studies] in leukemias, brain tumors and cancer in general, lack of clinical trial participation (and of the increased knowledge of tumor biology that derives from modern clinical trials) offers one explanation" for poor cancer survival improvements in young adults.
Differences in physical tolerance to therapy, tumor biology, treatment options, health insurance coverage and the availability of new treatments and protocols all have been offered as explanations as to why it's been so tough to improve cancer outcomes in this age group.
Reporting in the May 1 issue of the journal Cancer, the Texas team found that age-related survival rates for people with sarcoma cancers correlated with participation rates in clinical trials, except for those with Kaposi's sarcoma, a relatively rare cancer of connective tissue that tends to coincide with HIV infection.
Among people with soft-tissue and bone sarcomas, those 15 to 45 years old had the least improvement. Within this age group, the lowest rates of clinical trial participation were among those 20 to 44 years old.
For people with Kaposi's sarcoma, those 30 to 44 years old had the greatest increase in survival rates. Within this age group, people 35 to 44 years old had the highest rates of participation in clinical trials, the researchers noted.
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