Establishment of an epidemiological database targeting the residents living around the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site

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As of the end of November 2006, the database contained basic information on 136,000 residents of the Semipalatinsk region and mortality information on 69,000 people.The principal investigator, who had made presentations on interim results of epidemiological analysis at such meetings as an international symposium held in Hiroshmia, presented detailed results on cancer mortality at the International Cancer Registry Conference in September 2007(Ljubljana, Republic of Slovenia). These results were reported to the Kazakhstan Ministiy of Health through the Kazakhstan Research Institute of Radiation Medicine.Number of deaths and percentage by cancer type registered in the database(11,034 cases) show that the most frequent cause of death during the period between 1949 and 1975 was esophagus cancer, followed bystomach cancel and lung cancer. But, since 1975, lung cancer has been the most frequent, followed by stomach and esophagus cancer. Age-adjusted mortality, or the age-specific rate(ASR), from esophagus cancel tended to increase from 1949 to 1970, but has decreased since 1970 for both males and females. With regard to lung cancer mortality trends, the ASR for males was 20 or less from 1950 to 1960, but increased drastically during the period from 1960 to 1970. This increasing trend was not at all in evidence among females. Originally, people in Kazakhstan did not have the custom of smoking tobacco, but during Woild War II, men were drafted to serve in the former Soviet militaiy, where they picked up the smoking habit. Cunently, men start smoking when they are about 12 years old, which is considered to be the cause of the drastic increase in lung cancer. In contrast to men, however, women do not smoke. Thus, this sex difference in the lung cancer rate clearly shows that the development of lung cancer is due to smoking.