How Often Brain and Nervous System Tumors Happen Around the World
Original title: Global variations, temporal trends, and socioeconomic inequalities in the burden of malignant brain and central nervous system tumors: a population-based systematic analysis of GLOBOCAN 2024.
How far along is this research?
- Lab cells
- Animals
- Review
- Tested in people
This was tested in people. That is the most reliable kind of research we share.
This counts cases in people from past records. It is not a treatment.
The short version
These tumors are rare, but the risk is not the same in every country.
What was studied. Researchers used world cancer and population databases to count malignant brain and central nervous system tumors. They worked out the chance of getting one or dying from one over a whole lifetime, and looked at trends from 2003 to 2017.
What they found. Around the world, 0.39% of people will get one of these tumors in their lifetime, and 0.32% will die from one. The lifetime chance of getting one was 0.16% in the least developed countries and 0.59% in the most developed ones. The type found most often was astrocytic tumors.
What this means, and what it doesn't
What it could mean: This gives you a sense of how rare these tumors are. It also shows that counts and deaths differ a lot by country. The authors think this partly reflects gaps in medical care and testing from place to place.
What it doesn't mean: This is not a new treatment or a new test. It is a count of cases pulled from records, not a trial of any drug, so nothing here changes your care today. It cannot tell you your own personal risk. And it is not a cure or a promise of one.
Source: PubMed, October 6, 2026 · Read the original
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