HEALTH : Brain Cancer on Rise in Elderly

Brain cancer has increased by up to 500% among elderly Americans, a trend that an expert at the National Cancer Institute calls “alarming” because the disease is almost always fatal.

“It once was considered that brain tumors reached a peak rate (among people in their 30s) and then would rapidly decline in the older population, but it now appears that the incidence continues to increase with age,” said Nigel H. Greig, a National Institute on Aging researcher. “I think it is alarming.”

In a study to be published Wednesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Greig and three co-authors report that the rate of brain cancer appears to have increased by up to sixfold for elderly age groups in 1985 compared to the rates measured from 1973 to 1974.