AACR. US: Men and women who worry about cancer
are more likely to want to get screened for colon cancer, but feeling
uncomfortable at the thought of cancer makes them less likely to
actually go for the test, according to a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
“Many
people are afraid of getting cancer, but fear doesn’t have the same
effect on everyone,” said Charlotte Vrinten, a researcher at the Cancer
Research U.K. Health Behaviour Research Centre at University College
London. “For some people, cancer fear motivates them to get checked up;
for others, it puts them off from finding out whether they have cancer.”
Vrinten
and colleagues hypothesized that the differences might be based on how
people experience fear: Some fearful people tend to worry a lot about
cancer, while others feel physically uncomfortable thinking about it.
“In our study, instead of using a combined measure of cancer fear, as is
often done, we distinguished these different aspects of fear to see
whether they had different effects on people’s decisions about cancer
screening,” Vrinten added.
Vrinten and colleagues found that the
effect of cancer fear depended on the type of fear. Worriers were more
likely to want to get screened for colon cancer, but those who felt
uncomfortable were 12 percent less likely to attend screening. “Twelve
percent may not seem like a lot,” added Vrinten, “but given that tens of
thousands of people are eligible for this type of screening, it means a
big difference in the number of people actually attending. Our study
showed that cancer fear is still very common; more than half of our
participants said they felt uncomfortable when thinking about cancer,
and about a quarter worried a lot about cancer.
“Public campaigns
often focus on increasing public fear about cancer, for example, by
emphasizing how common cancer is or how deadly some types of cancer are.
This might put some people off, rather than motivate them to get
screened,” said Vrinten. “Public information about endoscopic screening
for colon cancer should help people understand that it can actually
prevent colon cancer, so having the test can mean they have one less
cancer to worry about.”
Vrinten and colleagues recruited
nearly 8,000 participants aged 55 to 64 years from the U.K. Flexible
Sigmoidoscopy trial into their psychological substudy on cancer fear.
This was 60 percent of those asked to participate, and 91 percent of
them (54 percent women) had complete data on all three cancer fear
indicators used in the study. Overall, 59 percent of the respondents
were more afraid of cancer than of other diseases, 53 percent felt
uncomfortable thinking about cancer, and 25 percent worried a lot about
cancer.
Of the 6,299 participants (82 percent) who responded that
they would “probably” or “definitely” take up the offer of colorectal
cancer screening, 1,995 were randomized to receive a screening
invitation. Records from the clinics that performed the endoscopic
screening tests showed that 71 percent attended their appointment.
The study was supported by Cancer Research U.K. Vrinten declares no conflicts of interest.