Cancer in adults with intellectual disability: a systematic review of prevalence and incidence
Martin McMahon, Andrew Wormald, Shauna Walsh, Jessica Eustace-Cook, Mary McCarron, Philip McCallion, Valerie Smith, Alyson Mahar, Louise Lynch · 2025
Read Cancer in adults with intellectual disability: a systematic review of prevalence and incidence by Martin McMahon, Andrew Wormald, Shauna Walsh, Jessica Eustace-Cook, Mary McCarron, Philip McCallion, Valerie Smith, Alyson Mahar, Louise Lynch (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12699865.txt.
Description
How often cancer strikes adults with intellectual disability is poorly recorded, and hints suggest their pattern differs from the general public's. Martin McMahon and co-authors systematically gather the evidence on cancer prevalence and incidence in this group. They search six databases and grey sources up to May 2025.
Only two studies reported prevalence and ten reported incidence, which itself shows the evidence gap. The pooled prevalence was about 2 percent. Incidence estimates ran from 1 to about 4.7 percent, but differing designs block direct comparison. Overall rates look similar to or lower than the general population's. Some cancers, though, appeared more often, including ovarian, testicular, and unknown-primary cancers. The authors blame uneven definitions and case finding for the blur, and call for cleaner data.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Martin McMahon, Andrew Wormald, Shauna Walsh, Jessica Eustace-Cook, Mary McCarron, Philip McCallion, Valerie Smith, Alyson Mahar, Louise Lynch |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 47 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |