Overall scale of disease including trends

Table MESO01 shows that the annual number of mesothelioma deaths in Great Britain has risen fairly constantly since 1968 (the first complete year for which data is available following the introduction of the mesothelioma register in 1967); see also Figure 1. The total number of deaths in 2005 was 2037. Most of those who die from mesothelioma each year are male: in 2005 there were 1749 male deaths, 86% of the total number. Figure 1 also shows the number of disablement benefit cases made each year for mesothelioma since 1981. The sharp increases in claims registered from 2002 onwards may be due to the introduction of a new method of collecting statistical information in April 2002. Table MESO02 shows the number of mesothelioma deaths in each year in 5-year age groups for males and MESO03 shows the number of mesothelioma deaths in each year in 5-year age groups for females.

Although the vast majority of mesothelioma cases are caused by occupational exposure to asbestos, a relatively small number of deaths each year occur in people with no history of exposure. There is some evidence to suggest that there could be as many as 50-100 of these so called spontaneous mesotheliomas each year.

The number of female mesothelioma deaths has always been much smaller than the corresponding number of male deaths. The proportion of annual deaths which were female has tended to fall since 1968. In the early 1970s over 20% of deaths were female. The proportion fell to 13% in the early 1990s and has remained fairly constant at around 14% on average since then. There were 288 deaths provisionally recorded for females in 2005.

Table MESO04 shows numbers of mesothelioma deaths and death rates by age and sex for the twelve three-year time periods from 1970-2005. Death rates for males are shown in Figure 2a. There are large differences in the magnitude of the rates between the different age groups for males. The rates since 1990, in the two oldest age groups (65-74 and 75+), are between 2 and 3 orders of magnitude higher than those in the lowest age category (0-44 years) and follow an increasingly upward trend over time. In the 55-64 age group the increase in the rate over time has generally not been as steep as for older age groups, and shows some evidence of levelling off in recent years. After an increasing trend in the earlier time periods, rates in the 45-54 age group now show a decreasing downward trend. The rates began to fall during the early 1990s and continue to do so. Rates for the youngest age group (0-44 years) follow a similar pattern, although there was a slight increase in the latest time period (but based on a very small number of cases).  This pattern of progressively higher rates in older people and decreasing rates in younger people is expected as the peak of the epidemic approaches.

Death rates for females are shown in figure 2b. The rates for females over time tend to fluctuate to some extent because of greater statistical variation due to the smaller overall numbers. Rates for females are generally an order of magnitude lower than those for males.