Nasopharyngeal Cancer

The distinctive global incidence patterns and risk factors for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) make this a unique malignancy that represents an epidemiologic challenge. NPC is rare throughout most of the world but relatively common in southern China, Southeast Asia, the Arctic, North Africa, and the Middle East. This pattern is determined in part by the geographic and ethnic distribution of established risk factors for NPC, which include early/aberrant Epstein Barr virus infection, Chinese-style salted fish consumption, family history, certain human leukocyte antigen alleles, and tobacco smoking. Other possible NPC risk factors include certain dietary, occupational, and infectious exposures and genetic variants. Risk factors for NPC in low-incidence regions, where tumors are more often of squamous cell histology than in high-incidence regions, are poorly understood, as are etiologic interactions among genetic, environmental, and infectious risk factors for NPC.