“For the first time since the report was first issued in 1998, both incidence and death rates for all cancers combined are decreasing for both men and women, driven largely by declines in some of the most common types of cancer,” said the Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, which tracks trends in the illness from 1975-2005.

Although the cancer mortality rate has been declining since the report was first published 10 years ago, what researchers found noteworthy in this year’s report was the fact that the cancer diagnosis rate also fell.

“The decline in both incidence and death rates for all cancers combined is due in large part to declines in the three most common cancers among men (lung, colon/rectum and prostate) and the two most common cancers among women (breast and colon/rectum) combined with a leveling off of lunch cancer death rates among women,” the report said.

The rate at which new cancers were diagnosed fell by 0.8 percent per year from 1999-2005 for both men and women, while the death rate from cancer declined 1.8 percent from 2002 to 2005.

The continuing fall in mortality from cancer reflected “gains in prevention, early detection and treatment,” said Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society (ACS).

But large differences still exist in cancer death rates by state and region, the report found.

“We can see that in areas of the country where smoking and tobacco use are entrenched in daily life, men and women continue to pay a price with higher incidence and death rates from many types of cancer, urging a greater commitment by officials to implementing tobacco control programs,” said Betsy Kohler, head of the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR).

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