Characterization of Esophageal Cancer and ItsAssociation with Influencing Factors in GuangzhouCity, China

Spatiotemporal Distribution, Time to Treatment Outcome Clustering and Determinants of Esophageal Cancer in Ethiopia, a Scoping Study

INTRODUCTION

Esophageal cancer was the eighth and sixth leading cause of morbidity of all cancers in the world, and the 15th and 12th in Ethiopia, respectively. There is a lack of comprehensive data regarding Ethiopia's esophageal cancer hotspot, treatment outcome clustering, and other factors.

OBJECTIVE

This scoping review was designed to understand the extent and type of existing evidence regarding spatiotemporal distribution, time to treatment outcome clustering, and determinants of esophageal cancer in Ethiopia up to March 28, 2023.

METHODS

Three-step search strategies were employed for the scoping review from March 15 to 28, 2023. Targeted databases included PubMed/Medline, PubMed Central (PMC), Google Scholar, Hinari, and Cochrane for published studies and different websites for unpublished studies for evidence synthesis. Data were extracted using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) manual format.

RESULTS

Our final analysis comprised 17 (16 quantitative and 1 qualitative) studies. Three studies attempted to depict the country's temporal distribution, whereas 12 studies showed the spatial distribution of esophageal cancer by proportion. The regional state of Oromia recorded a high percentage of cases. Numerous risk factors linked to the tumor have been identified in 8 investigations. Similarly, 5 studies went into detail regarding the likelihood of survival and the factors that contribute to malignancy, while 2 studies covered the results of disease-related treatments.

CONCLUSIONS

The substantial body of data that underpins this finding supports the fact that esophageal cancer has several risk factors and that its prevalence varies greatly across the country and among regions. Surgery, radiotherapy, or chemotherapy helped the patient live longer. However, no research has investigated which treatment is best for boosting patient survival and survival clustering. Therefore, research with robust models for regional distribution, clustering of time to treatment outcomes, and drivers of esophageal cancer will be needed.

Farmland transfer and esophageal cancer incidence rate: mediation of pollution-related agricultural input intensity

Cancer is a growing global health threat. Examining the determinants of cancer incidence can benefit for cancer treatment and prevention. Farmland transfer relates to the risk factors of esophageal cancer including environmental pollution, services access, and habits. This study characterizes the associations between farmland transfer and esophageal cancer incidence rate (ECI) that integrate mediated effect of pollution-related agricultural input intensity in Xiaoshan District, China. The state-space model is employed to quantify the relationships among farmland transfer, pollution-related agricultural input intensity, and ECI. The results showed that (1) Total effects of the proportion of transferred farmland (TFA) area cause a reduction in the ECI. Besides, the total positive effects of the proportion of transferred farmland cultivated non-grain crop (NGC) and proportion of farmland transferred to non-farmer users (NFU) show a downward trend. (2) The raise of TFA can result in the reduction of chemical fertilizer use intensity. Meanwhile, the raise of NGC and NFU can result in the growth of pollution-related agricultural input intensity. But these increasing effects generally show a downward trend. (3) Increasing chemical fertilizer use intensity and pesticide use intensity results in the rise of esophageal cancer incidence rate as a whole. (4) In general, farmland transfer has positive direct effects on esophageal cancer incidence rate. (5) The average proportions of mediated effects in all state-space models are larger than 10%. These findings can raise land reform policy designers' awareness of the risk of public health since the land transfer markets are emerging rapidly in land reform in many developing countries to improve agricultural production.

Spatiotemporal Hotspots of Study Areas in Research of Gastric Cancer in China Based on Web-Crawled Literature

Gastric cancer is a common malignancy worldwide and poses a serious threat to human public health. The difficulty in obtaining epidemiological data limits the development of cross-disciplinary related research. In this study, 99,364 publications on gastric cancer from 1991 to 2019 were obtained using web-crawler technology, and a technical framework for extracting toponyms from these publications was constructed to analyze spatiotemporal hotspots of study areas in gastric cancer research in China. The results showed the following: (1) The accuracy of toponym extraction was greatly improved after eliminating the systematic exclusion words and adding historical toponyms, with a precision of 95.31% and a recall of 94.86%. (2) Gastric cancer research (GCR) and gastric cancer research with toponyms (GCRWT) are attracting increasing amounts of attention. The amount of GCR results published in Chinese and English is gradually leveling off, and the imbalance between those of GCRWT is gradually widening. (3) The spatial distribution of gastric cancer research in China is uneven, and the hotspots are mainly located in the eastern coastal areas. There were huge advances in gastric cancer research at the province/city/county scale in Eastern China, while the central region has only increased research at the county scale. We suggest that gastric cancer research should pay more attention to the central region, which has the highest gastric cancer incidence/mortality. This study provides important clues for research on and investigations of gastric cancer.

Progressing towards Environmental Health Targets in China: An Integrative Review of Achievements in Air and Water Pollution under the “Ecological Civilisation and the Beautiful China” Dream

Despite the positive effect of industrialisation on health and quality of life indicators across the globe, it is also responsible for the release of chemical toxins into the environment. Thus, the pursuit of economic development through industrialisation has equally nurtured numerous environmental disasters with accompanying catastrophic health effects. China is one of the countries with high carbon emissions, but new policy changes have resulted in massive gains in controlling environmental damage while enhancing the environment-related quality of life. This paper combines the six-step integrative review strategy with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) strategy to determine appropriate exclusion and inclusion criteria to explore the available stock of literature. We note that overall pollution in China fell by 10% between 2014 and 2019 whereas the average fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration of 93 micrograms per cubic meter reduced by 47% by 2019. Beijing exhibited the top 200 most polluted cities in 2019 after recording the lowest PM2.5 ever. All cities that implemented the 2012 Environmental Air Quality Standards reduced the average concentration of PM2.5 and sulfur dioxide by 42–68% by the end of 2018. Improvements in freshwater quality and a decline in water pollution levels were recorded despite increases in economic growth, urbanisation, energy use, trade openness, and agriculture, all of which are major stimulants of pollution. Deterring environmental tariff, tight ecological inspections, closing down of non-compliant producers, heavy investment in environmental control, and the ambitious five year-plan to revitalise renewable energy goals emanating from China’s ecological civilisation masterplan are responsible for these improvements in air and water pollution. China needs to work more aggressively to consolidate the gains already made in order to quicken the actualisation of the ecological civilisation and beautiful China dream.