title: Correlation patterns of cancer relative frequencies with some socioeconomic and demographic indicators in Brazil: an ecologic study.
abstract: Sex-specific relative frequencies (RF) of oral, esophageal, stomach, colon, rectal, laryngeal, lung, female breast, cervical and penile cancers obtained from a government-sponsored, nation-wide data base of histopathological diagnoses were evaluated with respect to all possible inter-site correlations and with 12 socioeconomic and demographic variables for 23 States in Brazil. Use of bivariate and multivariate methods detected a high positive intercorrelation among RFs of lung, laryngeal and colon cancers regardless of sex. RFs for these 3 sites were also positively correlated with many markers of State development and affluence. Cervical and penile cancers emerged as a distinct subset with respect to their correlation patterns. RFs for these neoplasms were highly (positively) correlated (r = 0.8606, p less than 0.001) with each other and exhibited intense negative associations with many of the affluence markers and the former cancer sites. Bivariate correlations generally exhibited a better fit with female-specific RFs than with data from males which was reflected in the number of strong correlations detected by sex.
authors.affiliation: Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, São Paulo Branch, Brazil.
authors.forename: E L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Franco
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Campos Filho
authors.forename: L L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Villa
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Torloni
mesh_terms: D001938:Brazil; D003710:Demography; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007226:Infant Mortality; D008297:Male; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology*; D010412:Penile Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D002583:Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology