Merletti F, Heseltine E, Saracci R, Simonato L, Vainio H, Wilbourn J
Cancer Res. 1984 May;44(5):2244-50.
Epidemiological observations indicate that cancers affecting different organs and systems in humans have different causes. At the descriptive level, cancer incidence and mortality rates exhibit patterns of geographic and temporal variation which are distinct and separate for each cancer site and even, at a given site, for different histological types (for instance, increasing squamous cell carcinoma of the lung and decreasing stomach cancer in most developed countries in recent decades). The existence of these distinct patterns in itself indicates that different causes are at the origin of cancers at different sites. Hence, it is of scientific and practical importance not only to identify agents that are carcinogenic to humans but also to specify as definitely as possible the target organ(s) of their action. This is done in the present review of results in the International Agency for Research on Cancer Monographs on the Evaluation of the Carcinogenic Risk of Chemicals to Humans.
流行病学观察表明，影响人类不同器官和系统的癌症有不同病因。在描述层面，癌症发病率和死亡率呈现出地理和时间变化模式，这些模式因癌症部位不同而各异，甚至在给定部位，不同组织学类型也有所不同（例如，近几十年来，大多数发达国家肺癌鳞状细胞癌发病率上升，胃癌发病率下降）。这些不同模式的存在本身就表明，不同部位癌症的起源病因不同。因此，不仅要确定对人类致癌的因素，还要尽可能明确其作用的靶器官，这具有科学和实际意义。国际癌症研究机构《人类化学物致癌风险评估专论》的结果综述正是为此而进行的。
