Descriptive Epidemiology and Human Cancer

Epidemiology, the study of the distribution and determinants of disease in human populations, has proved remarkably informative about the patterns and causes of cancer in different populations around the world. We now have a reasonably clear description of the burden of disease and death caused by cancer and of the extent of variation of cancer rates around the world by age and sex. We describe here some of the epidemiological terms and findings commonly used in the context of descriptive epidemiology.