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Kidney Week

Abstract: TH-PO1090

A Worrisome Explosion: Time Series Analysis of Kidney Cancer Incidence in the United States

Session Information

Category: CKD (Non-Dialysis)

  • 1901 CKD (Non-Dialysis): Epidemiology, Risk Factors, and Prevention

Authors

  • Ray, Achintya, Tennessee State University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
  • Putatunda, Bhabendra, Nephrology Associates PC, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States
Background

With over 500,000 adults in the US suffering from kidney & renal pelvis cancer and 65,000 new cases are estimated to be diagnosed in 2018 (representing 3.8% of all new cancer cases), kidney cancer poses a major public health challenge and remains a significant source of healthcare cost and mortality. Between 1975-2015, national incidence of kidney cancer more than doubled from 7.1 to 15.7 per 100,000 population.

Methods

Annual time series data covering 1975-2015 is collected from NCI’s SEER. Level and smoothed (moving average, 3-year and 5-year) time series plots are obtained (details in Figure 1). Autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation functions obtained from the time series data point to a long memory in the data generating process and help us in understanding the magnitude of rising in renal cancer incidence during the last half-century. Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) tests are performed to check the stationarity in the time series data.

Results

ADF tests using the standard estimation equation rejected stationarity of the incidence data for lag lengths 1, 3, and 5 points to the presence of strong non-stationarity in longitudinal incidence in kidney cancer. The results pointing to non-stationarity hold even after controlling for trend, and random walk with or without drift.

Conclusion

Analysis of 41 years of kidney cancer incidence data strongly establishes that kidney cancer incidences have been increasing statistically significantly over time. The incidence has more than doubled in the last half-century. Current evidence does not support any immediate possibility of a reversal in that increasing trend. Results point to a strong need for urgent interventions and robust public health awareness campaigns aimed at slowing or perhaps reversing the explosive trend in kidney cancer incidence.