The Current Situation and Future Trend of Leukemia Mortality by Sex and Area in China

Leukemia is one of the most common cancers. We conducted this study to comprehensively analyze the temporal trends of leukemia mortality during 2003-2017 and project the trends until 2030. We extracted national-level data on annual leukemia mortality from China Health Statistics Yearbooks (2003-2017). We applied the Joinpoint regression model to assess leukemia mortality trends in urban and rural China by sex during 2003-2017. We also produced sex-specific leukemia mortality using the adjusted Global Burden Disease (GBD) 2016 projection model. In urban areas, age-standardized leukemia mortality decreased significantly among females during 2003-2017 (APC = -0.9%; 95% CI: -1.7, -0.1%). In rural areas, significant decreases of age-standardized leukemia mortality were both found among males (APC = -1.7%; 95% CI: -2.9, -0.5%) and females (APC = -1.6%; 95% CI: -2.6, -0.7%) from 2008 to 2017. Rural-urban and sex disparities of leukemia mortality will continue to exist until the year 2030. According to projection, the leukemia mortality rates of males and rural populations are higher than that of females and urban populations. In 2030, leukemia mortality is projected to decrease to 3.03/100,000 and 3.33/100,000 among the males in urban and rural areas, respectively. In females, leukemia mortality will decrease to 1.87/100,000 and 2.26/100,000 among urban and rural areas, respectively. Our study suggests that more precautionary measures to reduce leukemia mortality are need, and more attention should be paid to rural residents and males in primary prevention of leukemia in China.