Carter Ashley J R, Delarosa Beverly, Hur Hannah
Biological Sciences Department, California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Boulevard, Long Beach, CA, 90804, USA.
Health Res Policy Syst. 2015 Nov 2;13:62. doi: 10.1186/s12961-015-0050-7.
Ideally, the allocation of research funding for each specific type of cancer should be proportional to its societal burden. This burden can be estimated with the metric 'years of life lost' (YLL), which combines overall mortality and age at death.
Using United Kingdom data from 2010, we compared research funding from the National Cancer Research Institute to this YLL burden metric for 26 types of cancers in order to identify the discrepancies between cancer research funding allocation and societal burden. We also compared these values to United States data from 2010 and United Kingdom data published in 2005.
Our study revealed a number of discrepancies between cancer research funding and burden. Some cancers are funded at levels far higher than their relative burden suggests (testicular, leukaemia, Hodgkin's lymphoma, breast, cervical, ovarian, prostate) while other cancers appear under-funded (gallbladder, lung, nasopharyngeal, intestine, stomach, pancreatic, thyroid, oesophageal, liver, kidney, bladder, and brain/central nervous system). United Kingdom funding patterns over the past decade have generally moved to increase funding to previously under-funded cancers with one notable exception showing a converse trend (breast cancer). The broad relationship between United Kingdom and United States funding patterns is similar with a few exceptions (e.g. leukaemia, Hodgkin's lymphoma, prostate, testicular cancer).
There are discrepancies between cancer research funding allocation and societal burden in the United Kingdom. These discrepancies are broadly similar in both the United Kingdom and the United States and, while they appear to be improving, this is not consistent across all types of cancer.
理想情况下，每种特定类型癌症的研究资金分配应与其社会负担成正比。这种负担可以用“寿命损失年数”（YLL）这一指标来估计，该指标综合了总体死亡率和死亡年龄。
利用英国2010年的数据，我们将国家癌症研究所的研究资金与26种癌症的YLL负担指标进行了比较，以确定癌症研究资金分配与社会负担之间的差异。我们还将这些数值与美国2010年的数据以及2005年公布的英国数据进行了比较。
我们的研究揭示了癌症研究资金与负担之间的一些差异。一些癌症获得的资金水平远远高于其相对负担所表明的水平（睾丸癌、白血病、霍奇金淋巴瘤、乳腺癌、宫颈癌、卵巢癌、前列腺癌），而其他癌症似乎资金不足（胆囊癌、肺癌、鼻咽癌、肠癌、胃癌、胰腺癌、甲状腺癌、食管癌、肝癌、肾癌、膀胱癌以及脑/中枢神经系统癌症）。在过去十年中，英国的资金分配模式总体上朝着增加对先前资金不足的癌症的投入发展，但有一个显著例外呈现相反趋势（乳腺癌）。英国和美国的资金分配模式之间的大致关系相似，但有一些例外情况（例如白血病、霍奇金淋巴瘤、前列腺癌、睾丸癌）。
在英国，癌症研究资金分配与社会负担之间存在差异。这些差异在英国和美国大致相似，并且虽然似乎有所改善，但并非在所有类型的癌症中都一致。
