Study: Wealth affects cancer rate

MANCHESTER, England, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- Cervical and lung cancer are more common in poor people while rates of breast cancer and melanoma are higher in the wealthy, British researchers said.

Lorraine Shack at the North West Cancer Intelligence Service and a team of researchers working on behalf of the United Kingdom Association of Cancer Registries used information from all eight British cancer registries from 1998 to 2003.

"We looked at all invasive cases of lung cancer, cervical cancer, malignant melanoma of the skin and female breast cancer," Shack said in a statement.

Women from affluent socioeconomic groups are more likely to have their first child at a later age, have fewer children in their lifetime and take hormone replacement therapy -- each is associated with a slightly higher incidence of breast cancer, the researchers said. The higher incidence of melanoma in the more wealthy groups may be partially explained by holidays in sunny climates.

The higher incidence of lung cancer is squarely blamed on smoking, Shack said.

The findings are published in the journal BMC Cancer.