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Is nasopharyngeal cancer really a "Cantonese cancer"?

2010; BioMed Central; Volume: 29; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5732/cjc.009.10329

1944-446X

Joseph Wee, Tam Ha, Susan Loong, Chao-Nan Qian,

Head and Neck Cancer Studies

Chinese Journal of CancerNasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) is endemic in southern China, with Guangdong province [1] and Hong Kong [2] reporting some of the highest incidences in the world.The journal Science has called it a Cantonese cancer [3] .We suggest that NPC became known as a Cantonese cancer as a result of work by John Ho and others from Hong Kong and Guangzhou [4] which has raised the profile of NPC, and secondly because of the high reported incidence of NPC in Hong Kong and Guangzhou.However, in this paper we propose that in fact NPC is a cancer that originated in the BaiYue (野protoTaiKadai冶 or 野protoAustronesian冶 or 野protoZhuang冶) peoples and was transmitted to the Han Chinese in southern China through intermarriage.To this end, we first review the populations with a high or intermediate incidence of NPC.We then use timelines together with anthropological, genetic, historical, and other data to demonstrate how the different populations may be interconnected.Finally, we formulate a working hypothesis that may explain how different populations and ethnic groups in which NPC is prevalent all descended from a common ancestor.The southern Chinese have one of the highest incidences of NPC in the world.In Hong Kong [2] , the agestandardized incidence rate (ASR) was 20.2 per 100 000 males, and 7.8 per 100 000 females during the period of 19951999.In Guangzhou city , the ASR was 22 .2per 100 000 for males and 9 .9 per 100 000 for females in 2002.In the historical literature of the Book of Former Han (Hanshu in Chinese, written in 111 CE) and the Records of The Grand Historian (Shiji in Chinese, written in 10991 BCE), there was an area inside current Guangdong province named BaiYue, meaning 耶hundred of tribes residing in the area of Yue爷 [5] .One of the major tribes continuously inhabiting this area is called Zhuang, and this tribe is also currently the largest ethnic minority population in China, with a population of 17 million [6] .Linguistic studies have found that modern Cantonese spoken by the people