Presse: Low income linked with higher risk of brain tumor

Neurology, May 25, 2004.

Low Income Linked with Higher Risk of Brain Tumor

By Alison McCook

People enrolled in the government healthcare plan Medicaid are more likely to develop a brain tumor than those not on Medicaid, researchers reported on Monday.

All participants in the current study were diagnosed in Michigan, where the household income must fall below 150 percent of the poverty line to qualify for Medicaid.

More research is needed to determine why earning less money may raise the risk of being diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, study author Dr. Paula Sherwood told Reuters Health.

"This study was a beginning step to identify a group of people that are at risk," she said.

Working out of Michigan State University in Flint, Sherwood and her colleagues reviewed all cases of malignant brain tumors diagnosed in Michigan between 1996 and 1997 among people between the ages of 25 and 84 years.

Overall, brain tumors were diagnosed in approximately 8.1 out of every 100,000 people. However, among Medicaid recipients, that figure rose to 14.2 out of every 100,000 people. Brain tumors occurred in 7.5 out of 100,000 people not receiving Medicaid, the authors report in the journal Neurology.

Looking closer, Sherwood and her team found that the disparities between Medicaid recipients and non-recipients were most pronounced among younger adults. For instance, male Medicaid recipients under the age of 44 were at least 4 times more likely to be diagnosed with a brain tumor than men of the same age not enrolled in Medicaid.

Among female Medicaid recipients under the age of 44, the risk of brain cancer was more than twice as high as that seen among their female peers not receiving Medicaid.

However, the disparities between Medicaid recipients and those who were not on Medicaid tended to disappear with increasing age.

"Poverty may accelerate the onset of (brain tumors) among those who are biologically predisposed and may thus deplete the ranks of the predisposed before old age," they suggest.

Interestingly, some studies have shown that the risk of brain cancer may also increase with income, with tumors occurring more frequently in people who live in more affluent areas.

Sherwood said that she and her colleagues looked at non-Medicaid-recipients as a whole, and did not distinguish between middle- and high-wage earners. "It may be the case that people with both high and low incomes are at risk," she said.


Mon 24 May, 2004 23:13

Poverty Raises Brain Tumor Risk, U.S. Study Says
Tue May 25, 2004

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Poor people are more likely to develop brain tumors but it is unclear why, researchers reported on Tuesday.
The study of Michigan residents on Medicaid, the government health care plan for the needy, may not reflect the full population but raises questions about the possible causes of brain cancer, the researchers said.

Paula Sherwood and colleagues at Michigan State University studied 1,006 cases of brain cancer for their report, published in the latest issue of the journal Neurology.

They found the overall rate of brain cancer in Michigan was 8.1 cases per 100,000 people over two years. Of those with low incomes -- defined as qualifying for Medicaid -- there were 14.2 cases per 100,000 people.

For their study, Sherwood´s team did not include patients under 25 or over the age of 84.

Men under the age of 44 on Medicaid were at least four times more likely to develop brain cancer than wealthier men. Women in the same category were 2.6 times as likely to develop brain tumors.

Sherwood said it was possible but unlikely that some people with brain tumors may spend all their money on treatment and thus become poor.

"The short survival time for this type of cancer combined with the Medicaid requirement that you spend your assets and be disabled for at least 12 months may make it difficult for a middle-class person to become eligible for Medicaid during the two-year period of the study," she said in a statement.

So what else is happening?

"Poverty may accelerate the onset of cancer in people who are biologically predisposed to develop it," Sherwood said.

"Low-income status is also associated with environmental factors such as exposure to toxins, quality of nutrition and shelter, and education and health factors. Additional, larger studies may help shed some light."

Nationally, 18,400 people will be diagnosed with brain cancer this year in the United States and nearly 12,700 will die of it, the American Cancer Society says.

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