A new study, led by scientists from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in collaboration with several international partners, investigated incidence rates of thyroid cancer in children and adolescents aged 0–19 years. This condition was very rare globally until about 2000, but the researchers found that the incidence increased rapidly in recent years in many countries. This finding suggests that overdiagnosis is likely to be the main driver of these increases. Overdiagnosis is the diagnosis of tumours that do not progress to cause symptoms or death in an individual’s lifetime.
In a video, Dr Salvatore Vaccarella, the IARC scientist who is the lead author of the study, explains the findings.