Social media linked to early substance use in US pre-teens

Social media use, texting, and video chatting linked to increased experimentation with alcohol, nicotine, or marijuana among early adolescents

University of Toronto

Toronto, ON - As teens continue to spend more time on screens and social media, a new study finds that among 11-12-year-olds, excessive time online is associated with early experimentation with substances like alcohol, nicotine, and cannabis.

Published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, the study shows that adolescents who spend more time on social media, texting, and video chatting are more likely to experiment with alcohol, nicotine, or cannabis one year later. In contrast, time spent on other types of screen activities—such as video gaming, browsing the internet, or watching TV, movies, or videos—was not linked to the same risks.

“Our findings suggest that online social connections may be driving the relationship between screen time and early adolescent substance use,” explains first author, Jason M. Nagata, MD, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. “When preteens are constantly exposed to friends or influencers drinking or smoking on social media, they are more likely to see these behaviors as normal and may be more likely to try these substances themselves.”

Social media platforms often display substance use in a positive light and are frequently used for marketing campaigns promoting alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis products. “With developing brains that are still building impulse control, young teens may be particularly vulnerable to this type of content and advertising,” adds Nagata.

Schools and parents may play an important role in addressing this issue. “Schools could consider media literacy programs that teach students about the influence of digital content on harmful behaviors,” says co-author Kyle T. Ganson, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. “Parents can also help by monitoring content and setting clear guidelines for their teens’ screen use.”

The study extends upon existing knowledge surrounding substance use in adolescents, which has been associated with poor academic performance, cognitive impairment, and increased risk of developing a substance use disorder later in life. The study uses data from the nationwide Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, the largest long-term study of brain development in the United States. The study collected data for 8,006 early adolescents aged 11-12 years old. Study participants provided information about their typical screen habits, as well as whether they had ever experimented with alcohol, nicotine, or cannabis.

“This study emphasizes the importance of understanding how digital social interactions impact teen behavior,” Nagata concluded. “Future research can deepen our understanding of these links to help create effective interventions.” 

 

---

Journal

Drug and Alcohol Dependence

DOI

10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2024.112504 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Prospective Association between Screen Use Modalities and Substance Use Experimentation in Early Adolescents

Article Publication Date

14-Nov-2024

 

CU Anschutz study shows association between climate change and eye maladies

A rare study focusing on the effects of climate change on the eyes reveals clinical visits increased when particulate matter from air pollution was prevalent

University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

         

AURORA, Colo. (Nov. 15, 2024) – Clinical visits by patients suffering ocular surface eye conditions more than doubled during times when ambient particulate matter from air pollution was in the atmosphere, signaling a possible association between climate change and ocular health, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Clinical Ophthalmology, is among the first to look into how climate change may affect the eyes.

“The World Health Organization has declared climate change to be “the single biggest health threat facing humanity,” said the study’s lead author Jennifer Patnaik, PhD, MHS, assistant professor of epidemiology and ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “Yet there are limited studies on the impact of climate change-related air pollution on ocular health.”

The researchers, including Associate Professor Katherine James, PhD, who directs the Climate & Human Health program at the Colorado School of Public Health,  examined the associations between ocular surface irritation and allergy-related daily outpatient office visits with daily ambient particular matter (PM) levels in the Denver Metropolitan area.

They obtained data of PM concentrations that were 10 micrometers or less and 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter. The researchers found 144,313 ocular surface irritation and allergy visits to ophthalmic clinics during the study period. The daily visit counts were 2.2 times higher than average when PM10 concentrations were 110. The clinic visit rate ratio increased as daily concentrations increased.

The study reported that conjunctivitis was the second most common eye disease among the clinic visits in the study, representing exactly one-third of all the visits. The prevalence of ocular allergic conjunctivitis has increased worldwide and varies across regions. Socioeconomic and environmental factors such as temperature, humidity and air pollution have been proposed as reasons for the increase.

Patnaik said the health risks of air pollution and climate change span a wide range of outcomes including infectious disease, weather-related morbidity and a variety of lung, kidney and cardiovascular maladies.

“Less studied chronic diseases such as dementia have also been shown to be associated with temperature and air pollutants,” she said. “Research on the topic of ocular conditions and climate is still in its early stages; therefore, more studies are needed to better understand how climate and air pollutants impact eye health.”

James agreed.

“This study highlights the systemic health impacts of climate stressors including air quality, wildfires, temperature, and drought conditions and the continued need to for transdisciplinary research,” she said.

The researchers hope to build and expand on these initial discoveries, said the study’s senior author Malik Kahook, MD, professor of ophthalmology at the CU School of Medicine. 

"These findings open the door to a deeper understanding of how environmental factors affect eye health. From a clinical standpoint, we’re now seeing more evidence suggesting that particulate matter in the air isn't just affecting respiratory or cardiovascular health but also directly impacting ocular surface health,” Kahook said. “Our next steps are to investigate how other air pollutants might influence eye health and to expand our focus to areas outside of Colorado. By doing so, we aim to identify preventive strategies and consider new treatment protocols tailored to address these environmental influences, ultimately protecting the most vulnerable patients in areas heavily affected by pollution."

Amy Dye-Robinson, from the Department of Biostatistics & Informatics at CU Anschutz, is a study co-author.

About the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus is a world-class medical destination at the forefront of transformative science, medicine, education and patient care. The campus encompasses the University of Colorado health professional schools, more than 60 centers and institutes, and two nationally ranked independent hospitals - UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital and Children's Hospital Colorado - that treat more than two million adult and pediatric patients each year. Innovative, interconnected and highly collaborative, the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus delivers life-changing treatments, patient care and professional training and conducts world-renowned research fueled by over $705 million in research grants. For more information, visit www.cuanschutz.edu.

 

###

 

---

Journal

Clinical Ophthalmology

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Association Between Particulate Matter Pollutants and Ophthalmology Visits for Ocular Surface Irritation and Allergy

Article Publication Date

13-Nov-2024

 

“Jekyll and Hyde” leaders do lasting damage, new research shows

Employees struggle when supervisors swing between good and bad behavior

Stevens Institute of Technology

Hoboken, N.J., November 15, 2024 - There’s only one thing worse than an abusive boss—and that’s a boss who thinks they can make up for their bad behavior by turning on the charm the following day. That’s the key finding from a new study from researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology, which shows that employees’ morale and job performance decline sharply when leaders lurch unpredictably between good and bad behavior. 

“We already know that abusive leadership takes a serious toll on workers—but now we’re seeing that leaders who swing back and forth between abusive and ethical leadership do even more damage to employees,” says Dr. Haoying Xu, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of management in the Stevens School of Business. “It turns out that reverting to an ethical leadership style doesn’t magically erase the impact of prior bad behavior—and in some circumstances, it can actually make things worse.”  

The research, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, used surveys and field experiments to examine the impact of “Jekyll-and-Hyde” leadership on more than 650 full-time employees based in the United States and Europe. Dr. Xu’s team confirmed that the workers struggled when their supervisors were abusive—but found an even stronger negative impact when supervisors alternated unpredictably between abusive and ethical leadership styles.

“If you’re constantly guessing which boss will turn up—the good cop or the bad cop—then you wind up emotionally exhausted, demoralized, and unable to work to your full potential,” Dr. Xu explains. 

The new research also shows for the first time that “Jekyll-and-Hyde” leadership can take a serious toll even when employees aren’t directly impacted by a leader’s on-again, off-again misbehavior. When a supervisor’s own boss alternated between abusive and ethical leadership, the study found, it created additional uncertainty and eroded employees’ confidence in the supervisor’s capabilities.

“In today’s workplaces, employees are very attuned to their supervisors’ relationships with more senior leaders,” Dr. Xu says. “If that relationship becomes unpredictable, or is marked by repeated bouts of good and bad behavior, it can cause real problems for the whole team.” 

For organizations, the research offers some important new insights—most notably the fact that leaders who seek to atone for intermittent bad behavior are often doing real harm to their employees. “Organizations tend to intervene when bosses are consistently abusive, but are more tolerant of leaders whose abusive behavior only shows through from time to time,” Dr. Xu says. “With this study, however, we’ve shown that intermittent bad behavior can actually be more toxic for organizations.” 

To counter Jekyll-and-Hyde leadership, Dr. Xu says, organizations should pay attention to employees who voice concerns, and hold leaders accountable for sporadic abusive behavior. It’s also worth considering anger management coaching for leaders who show signs of volatility. “This kind of intermittent abusive leadership tends to be impulsive,” Dr. Xu says. “That means there’s scope to reduce or eliminate it by helping leaders to manage their tempers and improve their impulse control.” 

In future research, Dr. Xu hopes to explore how employees respond to and learn from Jekyll-and-Hyde leadership, and how a leader’s periodic abusive behavior impacts individual behavior and team dynamics. “There are some indications that this kind of leadership could be contagious, with a leader’s volatility fostering volatility in others,” he says. 

There is also some intriguing early evidence that employees might learn from and emulate a leader’s bad behavior more than they replicate their good behavior. “If that’s the case, then it would be another big reason for organizations to take Jekyll-and-Hyde leadership seriously,” Dr. Xu warns.

About Stevens Institute of Technology
Stevens Institute of Technology is a premier, private research university situated in Hoboken, New Jersey. Since our founding in 1870, technological innovation has been the hallmark of Stevens’ education and research. Within the university’s three schools, nearly 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students collaborate closely with faculty in an interdisciplinary, student-centric, entrepreneurial environment. Academic and research programs spanning business, computing, engineering, the arts and other disciplines actively advance the frontiers of science and leverage technology to confront our most pressing global challenges. The university continues to be consistently ranked among the nation’s leaders in career services, post-graduation salaries of alumni and return on tuition investment.

---

Journal

Journal of Applied Psychology

 

Scientists uncover earliest evidence of fire use to manage Tasmanian landscape

Australian National University

 

image: 

Matthew Adeleye (L) and David Bowman (R) in Emerald swamp, Three Hummock Island.

view more 

Credit: Photo: Simon Haberle

Some of the first humans to arrive in Tasmania, over 41,000 years ago, used fire to shape and manage the landscape, a new study from The Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Cambridge has found.

It is thought to be the earliest and most detailed record of humans using fire in the Tasmanian environment.

According to the researchers, early inhabitants of Tasmania were managing forests and grasslands by burning them to create open spaces, possibly for food procurement and cultural activities.

The team analysed traces of charcoal and pollen contained in ancient mud that showed how Indigenous Tasmanians (Palawa) shaped their surroundings and cared for Country over thousands of years.

Co-author and ANU palaeoecologist, Professor Simon Haberle, said the study provided important new details about life in Tasmania many centuries ago.

“Palaeoecological records show that Palawa people burned wet forest to first settle in Tasmania, as indicated by a sudden and unprecedented increase in charcoal accumulated in ancient mud 41,600 years ago,” he said.

“Earlier studies have shown that Aboriginal communities on the Australian mainland used fire to shape their habitats, but we haven’t had such detailed and deep-time records this part of Tasmania until now.”

The researchers studied ancient mud taken from islands in the Bass Strait, which is part of Tasmania today, but would have been part of the land bridge connecting Australia and Tasmania in the past.

According to study lead author Dr Matthew Adeleye, who completed his PhD at ANU and is now based at the University of Cambridge, Indigenous Tasmanians used fire as a tool to promote the type of vegetation or landscape that was important to them.

“As natural habitats adapted to cultural burning, we see the expansion of fire-adapted species such as Eucalyptus, primarily on the wetter side of the Bass Strait islands,” Dr Adeleye said. 

According to the researchers, the findings provide further insight into the long-standing connection Indigenous peoples have to Country.

Professor Haberle said a greater understanding of this relationship is important for landscape management in Australia today and could also assist in defining and restoring cultural landscapes.

“These early Palawa communities were the island’s first land managers,” Professor Haberle said.

“To protect Tasmanian and Australian landscapes for future generations, it’s vital that we listen and learn from Indigenous communities who are calling for a greater role in helping to manage Australian landscapes into the future.”

The research is published in Science Advances.

---

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adp6579 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Landscape burning facilitated Aboriginal migration into Lutruwita/Tasmania 41,600 years ago

Article Publication Date

15-Nov-2024

Study uncovers earliest evidence of humans using fire to shape the landscape of Tasmania

University of Cambridge

 

image: 

Emerald Swamp, Three Hummock Island

view more 

Credit: Simon Haberle

Some of the first human beings to arrive in Tasmania, over 41,000 years ago, used fire to shape and manage the landscape, about 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.

A team of researchers from the UK and Australia analysed charcoal and pollen contained in ancient mud to determine how Aboriginal Tasmanians shaped their surroundings. This is the earliest record of humans using fire to shape the Tasmanian environment.

Early human migrations from Africa to the southern part of the globe were well underway during the early part of the last ice age – humans reached northern Australia by around 65,000 years ago. When the first Palawa/Pakana (Tasmanian Indigenous) communities eventually reached Tasmania (known to the Palawa people as Lutruwita), it was the furthest south humans had ever settled.

These early Aboriginal communities used fire to penetrate and modify dense, wet forest for their own use – as indicated by a sudden increase in charcoal accumulated in ancient mud 41,600 years ago.

The researchers say their results, reported in the journal Science Advances, could not only help us understand how humans have been shaping the Earth’s environment for tens of thousands of years, but also help understand the long-term Aboriginal-landscape connection, which is vital for landscape management in Australia today.

Tasmania currently lies about 240 kilometres off the southeast Australian coast, separated from the Australian mainland by the Bass Strait. During the last ice age however, Australia and Tasmania were connected by a huge land bridge, which allowed people to reach Tasmania on foot. The land bridge remained until about 8,000 years ago, after the end of the last ice age, when rising sea levels eventually cut Tasmania off from the Australian mainland.

“Australia is home to the world’s oldest Indigenous culture, which has endured for over 50,000 years,” said Dr Matthew Adeleye from Cambridge’s Department of Geography, the study’s lead author. “Earlier studies have shown that Aboriginal communities on the Australian mainland used fire to shape their habitats, but we haven’t had similarly detailed environmental records for Tasmania.”

The researchers studied ancient mud taken from islands in the Bass Strait, which is part of Tasmania today, but would have been part of the land bridge connecting Australia and Tasmania during the last ice age. Due to low sea levels at the time, Palawa/Pakana communities were able to migrate from the Australian mainland.

Analysis of the ancient mud showed a sudden increase in charcoal around 41,600 years ago, followed by a major change in vegetation about 40,000 years ago, as indicated by different types of pollen in the mud.

“This suggests these early inhabitants were clearing forests by burning them, in order to create open spaces for subsistence and perhaps cultural activities,” said Adeleye. “Fire is an important tool, and it would have been used to promote the type of vegetation or landscape that was important to them.”

The researchers say that humans likely learned to use fire to clear and manage forests during their migration across the glacial landscape of Sahul – a palaeocontinent that encompassed modern-day Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea and eastern Indonesia – as part of the extensive migration out of Africa.

“As natural habitats adapted to these controlled burnings, we see the expansion of fire-adapted species such as Eucalyptus, primarily on the wetter, eastern side of the Bass Strait islands,” said Adeleye.

Burning practices are still practiced today by Aboriginal communities in Australia, including for landscape management and cultural activities. However, using this type of burning, known as cultural burning, for managing severe wildfires in Australia remains contentious. The researchers say understanding this ancient land management practice could help define and restore pre-colonial landscapes.

“These early Tasmanian communities were the island’s first land managers,” said Adeleye. “If we’re going to protect Tasmanian and Australian landscapes for future generations, it’s important that we listen to and learn from Indigenous communities who are calling for a greater role in helping to manage Australian landscapes into the future.”

The research was supported in part by the Australian Research Council.

---

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adp6579 

Article Title

Landscape burning facilitated Aboriginal migration into Lutruwita/Tasmania 41,600 years ago

Article Publication Date

15-Nov-2024

 

Traditional Mayan practices have long promoted unique levels of family harmony. But what effect is globalization having?

University of California - Santa Cruz

A new paper in the journal Child Development shows how some aspects of family interaction among Indigenous people in Guatemala have fundamentally shifted with rapid globalization, yet families have still maintained a unique level of harmony in their interactions.

UC Santa Cruz psychologist Barbara Rogoff has been working with Mayan communities in San Pedro la Laguna, Guatemala for five decades and noticed a sophisticated type of fluid, inclusive collaboration among children from these communities. During a research study 30 years ago, mothers and their two small children interacted in a very distinct way, with all 3 people mutually engaged in exploring novel objects provided by the research team.

This type of collaboration is one of the foundational elements of a way of organizing learning that Rogoff and her collaborators have come to call Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavors (LOPI). It’s a common traditional practice in many Indigenous and Mexican-heritage communities across the Americas, through which children learn by being involved alongside adults in the full range of daily activities of their family and community. 

“Everyone contributes, taking initiative to collaborate and foster the direction of the group, and during these shared activities, children get feedback and corrections on their contributions,” Rogoff explained. “Over the years, increased understanding of this way of learning has inspired educators and developmental psychologists around the world and supported Indigenous and Mexican-heritage communities as they work to maintain this way of organizing learning.”

Because LOPI is so different from Western approaches to classroom learning, Rogoff wondered how globalization might be affecting the practice in San Pedro la Laguna. So the research team repeated their study with relatives from the same families who were involved in the initial study. 

The new research found that current groups of a mother and two small children now collaborated among all members of the group about half as often as their predecessors 30 years ago did. In this regard, current Mayan families are becoming more like European American middle-class families, who, under similar circumstances, often interacted in ways that left out at least one of the three participants. 

Some trends that may be contributing to these changes in Mayan family interaction include declining use of the Indigenous Maya language and cultural practices and growing involvement with Western schooling and digital technology. Rogoff and her graduate student collaborator also noted that increased use of chairs and couches, as opposed to the traditional practice of kneeling on a mat on the floor, created increased physical separation that seemed to impede inclusive collaboration. 

However, the Mayan families still differed dramatically from European American families in maintaining harmony in their interactions with minimal conflict. Current Mayan families, similarly to their predecessors, engaged harmoniously in all but about 5% of interactions in the study, compared to European American families that engaged in conflictual or resistant interaction more than 20% of the time under similar conditions. 

In related studies, Rogoff and colleagues have also found that, in collaborative settings, European-heritage children are more likely to boss, ignore, or resist and to negotiate their separate ideas and goals, rather than collaborating with mutuality to advance a shared vision. 

In contrast, maintaining harmonious relations is a major cultural value of many Indigenous communities across the Americas. Rogoff believes this emphasis is important not only for the Mayan community, but also could help to combat many of the social and environmental problems that globalization has brought worldwide. 

“LOPI is a strength for learning for entire communities, including children, who learn as alert, community-minded contributors,” Rogoff said. “This has been known in everyday life in many communities and in the wisdom of the elders long before our research efforts. Bringing an understanding of LOPI to more people across cultures can help us all learn to be more community-minded.”

---

Journal

Child Development

DOI

10.1111/cdev.14181 

 

Political shadows cast by the Antarctic curtain

Kobe University

 

image: 

To protect the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from melting, a gigantic underwater curtain has been proposed to be installed on the Antarctic seabed. However, the political ramifications of such a superproject urgently require careful consideration by scholars of international law to anticipate potential political fault lines for the Antarctic Treaty System that has preserved the seventh continent as a place for peaceful scientific exploration.

view more 

Credit: SHIBATA Akiho

The scientific debate around the installation of a massive underwater curtain to protect Antarctic ice sheets from melting lacks its vital political perspective. A Kobe University research team argues that the serious questions around authority, sovereignty and security should be addressed proactively by the scientific community to avoid the protected seventh continent becoming the scene or object of international discord.

A January 2024 article in Nature put the spotlight on a bold idea originally proposed by Finnish researchers to save the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from melting, which is estimated to potentially raise global sea levels by up to 5 meters. The idea of installing an underground curtain 80 kilometers long and 100 meters high to prevent warm underground water from reaching the glaciers made an international splash, and “What had been a technical discussion among some scientists quickly became a social debate involving the general public,” says Kobe University international law researcher SHIBATA Akiho. In the scientific debate, however, the political aspect has either been completely ignored or dangerously downplayed, which runs the risk of kindling conflict around a project that is meant to protect humanity, in a setting that has been a model for peaceful international collaboration for over 60 years.

As experts on the international law that governs the Antarctic’s peaceful existence dedicated to scientific investigation, Shibata and a visiting scholar from the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Patrick FLAMM, scrambled to put together a careful analysis of the political repercussions of the global superproject. Shibata says, “We believe that it was important to publish a paper within one year of the original proposal, before the social debate takes on a life of its own.”

In a policy paper now published in the journal International Affairs, the Kobe University researcher points out consequences along three main themes: authority, sovereignty and security. Concerns about authority ask who is in a position to decide on the realization of such a project and what this means for the power balance in the body governing access to the Antarctic. Sovereignty concerns are centered around the implications for extant and dormant territorial claims. And questions around security consider how to practically safeguard a structure that would certainly be seen as planetary critical infrastructure. Shibata sums up, saying: “This paper sheds light on the political and legal ‘shadows’ hidden behind the exciting surface of science and technology. However, we believe that it is necessary for the members of society to make decisions on the development of these technologies based on a thorough understanding of such negative aspects.”

While the researchers write that “In the current climate, with growing international rivalry and great power strategic competition, it would be an extremely unlikely diplomatic achievement to secure the level of international cooperation … required for the proposed glacial geoengineering infrastructures,” they also point out a way forward by looking back. In the early 1980s, a smoldering conflict around guidelines for Antarctic mineral extraction got resolved by the 1991 “Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty,” which proactively prohibited mining in the Antarctic indefinitely. This solution set a precedent for the treaty parties to seek solutions that avoid international discord over the Antarctic.

The Kobe University law expert is careful to point out that prohibition is not the default solution, however. He explains: “Recently, momentum has gathered among natural scientists to examine such technologies more multilaterally from the viewpoint of whether they are appropriate in the first place. If in such a deeper scientific and technical discussion the argument is that there are social benefits that outweigh the governance risks we have presented, then again, we international political scientists and international legal scholars need to be involved in this discussion. Perhaps then the discussion will no longer be about protecting the key principles of the current Antarctic Treaty System while considering this technology but about modifying those key principles themselves.”

This research was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant 21K18124) and the Kobe University Strategic International Collaborative Research Grant Type C. It was conducted in collaboration with a researcher from the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt.

Kobe University is a national university with roots dating back to the Kobe Commercial School founded in 1902. It is now one of Japan’s leading comprehensive research universities with nearly 16,000 students and nearly 1,700 faculty in 10 faculties and schools and 15 graduate schools. Combining the social and natural sciences to cultivate leaders with an interdisciplinary perspective, Kobe University creates knowledge and fosters innovation to address society’s challenges.

---

Journal

International Affairs

DOI

10.1093/ia/iiae281 

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

‘Ice sheet conservation’ and international discord: governing (potential) glacial geoengineering in the Antarctica

Article Publication Date

18-Nov-2024

"At the Mountains of Madness" by H. P. Lovecraft

The H.P. Lovecraft Archive

https://www.hplovecraft.com › writings › texts › fiction

Aug 20, 2009 — I could not help feeling that they were evil things—mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss. That ...

 

Study reveals significant global disparities in cancer care across different countries

Researchers address increasing rates of cancer incidence and mortality in developing countries, and challenges in accessing treatments.

Wiley

A recent analysis reveals striking disparities in the cost and availability of cancer drugs across different regions of the globe, with significant gaps between high- and low-income countries. The findings are published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

The analysis, which drew on relevant published studies and reviews related to cancer and the availability of cancer treatments, predicts that there will be an estimated 28.4 million new cancer cases worldwide in 2040 alone. In the coming years, cancer incidence is expected to increase most significantly in low-income countries. Cancer mortality rates are also increasing in low-income countries, whereas they have leveled off in developed countries.

Research indicates that inequity in access to therapy, lack of proper screening, persistent carcinogenic risk factors, and inadequate healthcare infrastructure are major contributors to the higher cancer incidence and cancer-related mortality rates observed in low-income countries compared with high-income countries. Also, clinicians’ current understanding of cancer and its optimal treatment is primarily based on research conducted in high-income countries, whose residents may differ from individuals in middle- and low-income countries.

Studies reveal that economics can be a major challenge for optimal cancer care around the world. Newer cancer drugs such as immunotherapy medications can cost thousands of dollars more per year than standard chemotherapy. Also, low-income countries spend less of their total gross domestic product on cancer care than high-income countries, yet they often must pay more for the same essential cancer drugs.

“Cancer incidence and mortality are on the rise globally and are expected to disproportionately affect people in low- and middle-income countries. Unfortunately, access to newer cancer therapeutics is far more restricted in low- and middle-income countries due to prohibitive costs,” said senior author Fadlo R. Khuri, MD, of the American University of Beirut Medical Center, in Lebanon. “In this paper, we analyze the data and propose a few solutions that could help alleviate these worsening disparities—including the use of quality generics and biosimilars and the implementation of universal healthcare coverage and international medical funding.”

 

Additional information
NOTE: The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Please include journal attribution in all coverage. A free abstract of this article will be available via the CANCER Newsroom upon online publication. For more information or to obtain a PDF of any study, please contact: Sara Henning-Stout, newsroom@wiley.com

Full Citation:
“Global Disparities in Cancer Care: Bridging the Gap in Affordability and Access to Medications between High and Low-Income Countries.” Arafat H. Tfayli, Laura N. El-Halabi, and Fadlo R. Khuri. CANCER; Published Online: November 18, 2024 (DOI: 10.1002/cncr.35590).

URL Upon Publication: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/cncr.35590

Author Contact: Simon Kachar, Executive Director of Communications at the American University of Beirut, at sk158@aub.edu.lb

About the Journal     
CANCER is a peer-reviewed publication of the American Cancer Society integrating scientific information from worldwide sources for all oncologic specialties. The objective of CANCER is to provide an interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of information among oncologic disciplines concerned with the etiology, course, and treatment of human cancer. CANCER is published on behalf of the American Cancer Society by Wiley and can be accessed online. Follow CANCER on X @JournalCancer and Instagram @ACSJournalCancer, and stay up to date with the American Cancer Society Journals on LinkedIn.

About Wiley      
Wiley is one of the world’s largest publishers and a trusted leader in research and learning. Our industry-leading content, services, platforms, and knowledge networks are tailored to meet the evolving needs of our customers and partners, including researchers, students, instructors, professionals, institutions, and corporations. We empower knowledge-seekers to transform today’s biggest obstacles into tomorrow’s brightest opportunities. For more than two centuries, Wiley has been delivering on its timeless mission to unlock human potential. Visit us at Wiley.com. Follow us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn and Instagram.

---

Journal

Cancer

DOI

10.1002/cncr.35590 

Article Title

Global Disparities in Cancer Care: Bridging the Gap in Affordability and Access to Medications between High and Low-Income Countries

Article Publication Date

18-Nov-2024