Patterns of cancer in first generation immigrants from the Arab League and other countries

Arabic immigrants are a relatively new group of immigrants and one of the fastest growing populations in the United States. Yet, information about their disease patterns is limited because Arabic is not a recognized minority group in population statistics. We tested whether population-based cancer registry data were useful to describe cancer patterns of the first generation of Arabic immigrants, compared with non-immigrants as well as the first generation of other immigrants. Information on invasive cancer cases with only one primary and known age was extracted from Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) public use data (1973-2004) and software. Immigrants were divided by place of birth; Arabic: born in the Arab League countries, and other immigrants: born in countries other than the United States or Arab League, whereas US-born were used as a reference population. Information on place of birth was frequently absent for non-deceased cases, therefore data were limited to deceased cases. Age- and gender-standardized proportional ratios (SPR) were calculated for 24 aggregated cancer sites. Significantly high or low SPRs were observed for Arabic immigrants for the following cancer sites: liver (3.15), gallbladder & other biliary (1.87), thyroid (1.74), stomach (1.54), leukemia (1.41), lymphoma (1.36), pancreas (1.36), ovary (1.29), brain and other nervous system (1.23), lung (0.80), prostate (0.72), oral cavity and pharynx (0.64), esophagus (0.39), and skin melanoma (0.33). These patterns were similar for the other immigrants; however, ovary and brain were Arabic-specific, and thus may deserve further investigation for specific environmental or genetic exposures among Arabic immigrants.