Comprehensive Scoring Analysis

A new WHO study suggests more than 7 million cases of cancer in 2022 were preventable.

Nearly 40% of all the cases that year were caused by modifiable risk factors — behavioral and environmental factors we …

"We now have the information to prevent cancer before it starts," said Isabelle Soerjomataram, a cancer surveillance sp…

Speaking to the press last week, Soerjomataram and her colleague Andre Ilbawi were presenting the findings of a study i…

The two co-authored and published their results in the medical journal Nature Medicine on February 3, 2026.

The study leads with a statistic as striking as Soerjomataram's opening claim: 7.

1 million new cases of cancer were linked to what's known as modifiable risk factors (MRFs) — such as consuming tobacco…

7 million new cancer cases in 2022.

Research into MRFs is not strictly new.

We have long known that MRFs, which also include overweight and obesity, air pollution, and other environmental toxins,…

And the claim to be able to "prevent cancer before it starts" depends on many other factors, as well, access to healthc…

But the details of this study do offer some insight into the effects of MRFs, which can vary by region and by sex.

The authors considered 30 MRFs, including tobacco, alcohol, air pollution, and occupational exposure to toxins such as …

Level of preventable, HPV-related cancers in certain regions 'remain high' HPV-caused cancers account for the highest o…

But "vaccine hesitancy is very real," said Ilbawi in answer to questions from DW.

" higher income countries — Australia is one of them — cervical cancer is almost eradicated [at its current] level of 5…

"Yet when we look at the burden in Latin America, but also in Sub-Saharan Africa, that's where the issues remain.

HPV-related cancer, especially cervical cancer, is still very high there," Soerjomataram added.

In Latin America, for example, the Global Cancer Observatory recorded more than 63,000 cases of cervical cancer in 2022…

Maria Paula Curado, a leading cancer epidemiologist at the A.

Carmargo Cancer Center in Sao Paulo, Brazil, told DW that mortality rates from cervical cancer were high in Latin Ameri…

There may also be some vaccine hesitancy, "due to a lack of knowledge about how aggressive cervical cancer can be," sai…

"But in some areas of southern Brazil, some families think that if they have the HPV vaccination, they can start early …

" Curado said that while in some regions of Brazil vaccine coverage was about 67%, this was changing as the vaccine had…

But the "ideal coverage" would be about 80%.

New insights into preventable cancers among women and men The inclusion of infectious agents in the study has revealed …

And the researchers say they hope this will help improve cancer prevention measures.

Infections were found to have caused the highest number of preventable cancers among women — a total of 2.

Among men, it was behavioral risk factors smoking tobacco — a total of 4.

Diving deeper into the data on lung cancer, which is one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers in both women and men…

But while there were 1,326,453 lung cancer cases among men, the number was significantly lower, at 477,869, among women.

Preventable cancers require 'targeted interventions' With the Global Cancer Observatory predicting cancer cases to rise…

" Little is said in the study of the 62.

2% of cancer cases which could not be attributed to preventable MRFs.

"We are an ageing population," said Curado, "and, therefore, rare cancers are emerging with no standards for diagnosis …

" But Suzette Delaloge, a specialist in breast cancer and cancer prevention at the French research hospital Gustave Rou…

" Delaloge, who was not involved in the study, said that while the study highlighted how cancers were "largely shaped b…

] individual-level actions remain essential to mitigating their profound effects.

" The researchers said themselves that future cancer prevention measures will increasingly have to address various effe…

Edited by: Maren Sass, Carla Bleiker