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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Aging
Sec. Aging and Cancer
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fragi.2025.1506897

Analyzing the cancer mortality-to-incidence ratios and health expenditures in the aging population: A 20-year comparative study across high-income countries

Provisionally accepted
Majed Ramadan Majed Ramadan 1,2Shadell AlGhamdi Shadell AlGhamdi 3RAWIAH ABDULLAH ALSIARY RAWIAH ABDULLAH ALSIARY 1,2*
  • 1 King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 2 College of Applied Medical Science, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Science, Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 3 College of Medicine, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Jeddah, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The global burden of cancer is expected to increase by 60% over the next two decades, largely due to population aging. The study aims to examine the association between cancer mortality-to-incidence ratios (MIR) with healthcare expenditures (HE), and human development index score for individuals 70 years old or older. Method: This is an epidemiological study using publicly available data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) for six over the years 1990 to 2019. A generalized linear model was employed to examine the association between MIR, and health expenditures and health development index score. Results: Included countries showed a statistically significant negative association between MIR and both HE, and HE, indicating that higher HDI and HE are associated with decreased MIR with the highest decrease was for China, the coefficient for HDI is -1.29 (95% CI: -1.35 to -1.24, p < .0001), the coefficient for HE is -0.103 (95% CI: -0.17 to -0.03, p < .0001). There are variations exist in MIRs between high and low health expenditure countries for each cancer type.The study reveals a significant impact of HE and HDI on cancer outcomes in older adults. Variations between high and low HE nations highlight potentially improved cancer outcomes in high HE countries. Considering the anticipated growth in the aging population worldwide, a rise in cancer cases is expected among older individuals. The implications are profound, suggesting an impending strain on healthcare systems, particularly in nations with a high proportion of elderly and low health expenditures.

    Keywords: older adults, Cancer, Human Development Index, Health Expenditures, Mortality to incidence ratio

    Received: 06 Oct 2024; Accepted: 02 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Ramadan, AlGhamdi and ALSIARY. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: RAWIAH ABDULLAH ALSIARY, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC), Riyadh, 21423, Saudi Arabia

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