Correlation patterns of cancer relative frequencies with some socioeconomic and demographic indicators in Brazil: An ecologic study

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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 < 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.