Prostate cancer incidence and mortality among immigrants in Finland between 2000 and 2017 - a register-based cohort...

Prostate cancer impacts millions of men worldwide each year, and its significance will continue to rise as populations age. Literature demonstrates differences in cancer burden between immigrant groups and non-immigrants across the world. Despite its prevalence, little research has focused primarily on prostate cancer among immigrants.

We utilized individual-level data on all immigrant men who had lived in Finland for over a year between 1973 and 2017 and aggregate data on Finnish-born men to determine immigrants' incidence of and mortality from prostate cancer in relation to the men born in Finland. This gave us a study population of 162,844 non-Western and 56,127 Western immigrant men. Cases and deaths from the study period (2000-2017) were analyzed with the multivariate Poisson regression model for the groups, non-Western and Western immigrants separately.

Non-Western men had a relative risk (RR) of 0.663 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.609-0.722) for cases and 0.803 (0.646-0.997) for deaths. Western men had RRs of 0.876 (0.784-0.978) and 0.78 (0.567-1.072), respectively. A longer duration of residence and a younger age at immigration increased the risk for prostate cancer. Compared to the men born in Finland, both immigrant groups showed a lower risk of prostate cancer. Non-Western men may have also had a lower risk of death from it. Prostate cancer mortality in non-Western immigrants appears to be high compared to its incidence. While uncertain, this implication is concerning enough to warrant further research into the topic.