Marital status and cancer survival trends
Among Norwegian cancer patients, never-married people—especially older men—showed growing excess mortality versus married peers over decades.
Source
Changes over time in the effect of marital status on cancer survival
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cohort — Norwegian Cancer Registry cases 1953 onward; marital status and cancer outcomes over time
- N
- N=441556 · Women and men aged 30–89 at diagnosis
- Population
- Norwegian adults diagnosed with cancer
- Outcome
- Cancer outcomes associated with marital status, and how that association changed over time
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Inspect source passages
Marital status and cancer survival trends
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
Never-married men had ~3.4 percentage-point per decade rise in excess mortality.
For men, a statistically significant increase in excess mortality of about 3.4 percentage points per decade was observed for the never-married.
Study included 441,556 patients aged 30–89.
Our study is restricted to the 441 556 women and men who were 30-89 years old when they were diagnosed with a first tumor of one of the following 13 forms between 1970 and 2007: stomach, colon, rectal, pancreatic, lung, breast (females only), cervical, uterine, ovarian, prostate, or bladder cancer, malignant melanoma, or central nervous system tumors.
What they did
Using Cancer Registry data on 441,556 adults aged 30–89 with first tumours of 13 sites (1970–2007), authors modelled excess mortality by marital status over time, adjusting for age, education, site, stage, and time since diagnosis.
What they found
All unmarried groups had excess mortality vs married; for men, never-married excess mortality rose ~3.4 percentage points per decade, mainly among those diagnosed after age 70.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Causal pathways (treatment access, cohabitation misclassification, social support) and whether interventions closing the gap would improve survival.
Key terms
- Excess mortality
- Extra death risk relative to a reference group (here, married patients).
- Cancer registry cohort
- Population-based ascertainment of cancer cases over calendar time.
- Never-married
- Patients recorded as never having been married at relevant follow-up.
- Stage
- Extent of cancer at diagnosis used as a covariate.
- Cohabitation
- Living with a partner without marriage, which may blur marital categories.
- Oncology outcomes
- Survival and mortality results after cancer diagnosis.
Flashcards
0 of 11 answers reviewed
Research intelligence for this paper
See its role on concept claims, tensions it is part of, placement history, and related discoveries.
Quiz yourself
Cohort size was about:
Common questions
Who was included?
441,556 Norwegian adults 30–89 with a first tumour of one of 13 cancer forms, 1970–2007.
What trend stood out for men?
Never-married excess mortality rose about 3.4 percentage points per decade.
Where was the never-married disadvantage concentrated?
Mainly among those diagnosed above age 70.
Did divorced patients show the same rising gap?
Authors described a more stable pattern among the divorced.
More on Oncology outcomes