For a variety of reasons, which I'll try to explain in the next few blog posts, much of what we think we understand about these tumors is highly confusing and probably wrong.
Considering that these are rare tumors, you might accept a certain degree of ignorance, but sometimes the mysteries that surround rare tumors must be solved before we can make any headway understanding the more common tumors.
Also, for some strange reason, the incidence of seminomatous germ cell tumors of the testes, in the white population, has been increasing over the past 35 years (at least).
Here are the numbers, computed from the SEER (the U.S. National Cancer Institute's Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results) public use data files. The first column is the crude number of occurrences of seminomatous germ cell tumors of testes in white, non-hispanic males. The second column is the number of occurrences expressed as a proportion of all of the seer cases for the year examined, and the third column is the number of occurrences expressed as a proportion of the U.S. population for the year examined.
crude of SEER of U.S. Pop
1973 000036 000064 000016
1974 000026 000038 000012
1975 000044 000059 000020
1976 000069 000091 000031
1977 000197 000257 000089
1978 000169 000216 000075
1979 000192 000239 000085
1980 000225 000271 000099
1981 000200 000234 000087
1982 000240 000277 000103
1983 000257 000286 000109
1984 000252 000270 000106
1985 000256 000262 000107
1986 000293 000292 000122
1987 000302 000285 000124
1988 000299 000278 000122
1989 000343 000311 000138
1990 000338 000290 000135
1991 000303 000245 000120
1992 000352 000274 000138
1993 000340 000269 000131
1994 000385 000305 000147
1995 000303 000237 000115
1996 000371 000304 000139
1997 000379 000300 000141
1998 000408 000315 000150
1999 000363 000274 000133
2000 000413 000310 000146
2001 000409 000297 000143
2002 000398 000285 000138
2003 000371 000268 000127
2004 000400 000277 000136
2005 000382 000262 000129
2006 000374 000252 000125
2007 000378 000249 000125
Here's the graph. The blue columns are the crude numbers. The maroon columns are the numbers as a proportion of the year's seer records, and the white column are the numbers as a porportion of the U.S. population in the examined year.
When the incidence of a tumor increases almost every year, and we're clueless to explain the increase, it's probably worth thinking about the problem.
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- © 2010 Jules Berman
key words: carcinogenesis, neoplasia, neoplasms, tumor development, tumour development, germ cell tumor, germ cell tumour, tumor epidemiology, increasing germ cell cancer rates, germ cell cancer, seminomas, seminomatous, common disease, orphan disease, orphan drugs, genetics of disease, disease genetics, rules of disease biology, rare disease, pathology
In June, 2014, my book, entitled Rare Diseases and Orphan Drugs: Keys to Understanding and Treating the Common Diseases was published by Elsevier. The book builds the argument that our best chance of curing the common diseases will come from studying and curing the rare diseases.
I urge you to read more about my book. There's a generous preview of the book at the Google Books site.
