Relationship of age at death to calendar year of estimated maximum leukemia mortality rate.

Abstract

A FALL IN LEUKEMIA mortality around the year 1940 was first discerned among white infants of the United States (1). A subsequent analysis of the secular trends in U.S. children by Slocumb and MacMahon (2) showed that with passing time the decline had also begun to affect successively older children. By 1959, a decline apparently had occurred in the mortality for 3-year-olds (2). More recently, Fraumeni and Miller (3) reported that the once increasing leukemia mortality rates among U.S. whites between the ages of 1 and 74 years had begun to decline. This latest observation suggested that the wave effect in the mortality rates (the increase and subsequent decrease occurring later in time with in-