Epidemiological review of gastric cancer in India

Stomach cancer is the one of the leading cause of cancer in southern region of India. Its incidence is decreasing worldwide yet on global scale stomach cancer remains one of the most common causes of cancer death. Etiology of gastric cancer includes Helicobacter pylori infection, diet and lifestyle, tobacco, alcohol and genetic susceptibility. In this review, we tried to find the contribution of Indian scientist in understanding the descriptive and observational epidemiology of stomach cancer. PubMed was used as a search platform using key words such as stomach cancer, treatment, clinical characteristics, stomach cancer outcome, epidemiology, etiological factor and their corresponding Mesh terms were used in combination with Boolean operators OR, AND. Most of the reported studies on gastric cancer from India are case report or case series and few are case-control studies. Indian studies on this topic are limited and have observed H. pylori infection, salted tea, pickled food, rice intake, spicy food, soda (additive of food), tobacco and alcohol as risk factors for gastric cancer. More research is required to understand the etiology, develop suitable screening test, to demarcate high-risk population and to develop and evaluate the effect of primary prevention programs.