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Kidney transplant (KT) recipients are known to be at risk of developing several cancer types; however, cancer mortality in this population is underinvestigated. Our study aimed to assess the risk of cancer death among Italian KT recipients compared to the corresponding general population. A cohort study was conducted among 7373 individuals who underwent KT between 2003 and 2020 in 17 Italian centers. Date and cause of death were retrieved until 31 December 2020. Indirect standardization was used to estimate standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Cancer was the most common cause of death among the 7373 KT recipients, constituting 32.4% of all deaths. A 1.8‐fold excess mortality (95% CI: 1.59‐2.09) was observed for all cancers combined. Lymphomas (SMR = 6.17, 95% CI: 3.81‐9.25), kidney cancer (SMR = 5.44, 95% CI: 2.97‐8.88) and skin melanoma (SMR = 3.19, 95% CI: 1.03‐6.98) showed the highest excess death risks. In addition, SMRs were increased about 1.6 to 3.0 times for cancers of lung, breast, bladder and other hematopoietic and lymphoid tissues. As compared to the general population, relative cancer mortality risk remained significantly elevated in all age groups though it decreased with increasing age. A linear temporal increase in SMR over time was documented for all cancers combined (P <.01). Our study documented significantly higher risks of cancer death in KT recipients than in the corresponding general population. Such results support further investigation into the prevention and early detection of cancer in KT recipients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender-specific mortality surfaces are panels of time series of mortality rates that allow to examine the temporal evolution of male and female mortality across ages. The analysis of these surfaces is often complicated by time-varying effects that reflect the association of age and gender with mortality under unobserved time-varying conditions of the population under study. We propose a hidden Markov model as a simple tool to estimate time-varying effects in mortality surfaces. Under this model, age and gender effects depend on the evolution of an unobserved (hidden) Markov chain, which segments each time series of rates according to time-varying latent classes. We describe the details of an efficient EM algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters and suggest a straightforward parametric bootstrap routine to compute standard errors. These methods are illustrated on cardiovascular and cancer mortality rates, observed in Italy during the period 1980-2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The aging of the Italian population will unavoidably lead to a growing number of persons diagnosed and living with cancer. A comprehensive description of the burden of cancer mortality among Italian elderly (65-84 years of age) in the last four decades has not been carried out yet. Cancer mortality rates were used to describe time trends between 1970-2008. Methods: Mortality counts, provided by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, were grouped according to data availability: in quinquennia from 1970-74 through 1995-99, and in 2000-03 and 2006-08 groups. Age-standardized rates (world population) were computed by calendar periods while annual percent changes (APCs) were computed for elderly and middle aged (35-64 years) people for the period 1995-2008. Results: The number of cancer deaths in elderly nearly doubled between 1970-74 (31,400 deaths/year in men, and 24,000 in women) and 2006-08 (63,000 deaths/year in men, and 42,000 in women). Overall cancer mortality rates peaked during the quinquennia 1985-89 and 1990-94 (about 1,500/100,000 in men and 680 in women) and declined thereafter. Throughout 1995-2008 cancer mortality rates decreased by -1.6%/year in men and -0.9%/year in women. These decreases were mainly driven by cancers of the stomach, bladder, prostate, and lung (APC = -3.3%, -2.7%, -2.5%, -2.2%, respectively) in men, and by cancers of the stomach, bladder, and breast (APC = -3.5%, -1.9%, -1.1%, respectively) in women. Conversely, increases in mortality rates between 1995 and 2008 were recorded for lung cancer (APC = +0.6%) in women, cutaneous melanoma (APC = +1.7%) in men, and pancreatic cancer (APC = +0.6% in men and +0.9% in women). Conclusions: Overall favorable trends in cancer mortality were observed among Italian elderly between 1995 and 2008. Early diagnosis, improved efficacy of anti-cancer treatments and management of comorbidities are the most likely explanations of these positive observations. However, enduring preventive interventions against the most common risk factor (e.g. cigarette smoking), early diagnosis, and access to care should be reconsidered and extended to match the reductions of cancer mortality recorded in the elderly with those in the middle aged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]