Something happened in the UK in the 1950s to trigger a worldwide epidemic of a kind of cancer of the gullet, it was reported today.
The cause of the outbreak remains a mystery but led to cases of the disease, oesophageal adenocarcinoma, increasing over the next few decades worldwide, according to a report in Gut.
The numbers contracting the disease are continuing to increase, the researchers said.
The analysis shows the first "surge" in disease numbers beginning in 1960 in Scotland and England.
In the USA there was then a "surge" in the mid 1970s and in Sweden in 1991.
Smoking and obesity would contribute to cases of cancer – but cannot explain the unusual pattern of disease, according to Dr Gustaf Edgren, of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
Reductions in infection with the organism Helicobacter pylori might also play a part.
But none of these explain the "abrupt change or the astounding rate of increase," the researchers say.
Gut August 23 2012
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