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CDC: Child cancer rates down but brain cancers now most deadly among them

A new brief released by the Centers for Disease Control highlights both positive and disheartening statistics regarding cancer in children.

Brain MRI (FILE PHOTO)

ATLANTA -- A new brief released by the Centers for Disease Control highlights both positive and disheartening statistics regarding cancer in children.

The report, released by the CDC and the National Center for Health Statistics in September shows an overall downward trend for cancer among children and adolescents between 1999 and 2014 for both boys and girls.

The report also showed the same trend of decline between black and white children.

However the rates of decline also coincide with a rise in brain cancer as the most deadly form of the disease among children.

Previously, leukemia held this morbid distinction but the report credits "major therapeutic advances" for leukemia and other formers of cancer with possibly playing a role in increased survival.

Together, the two types of cancer made up mroe than half of all cancer deaths among children in 1999 and 2014 the brief shows.

In 1999, three out of 10 cancer deaths among children and teens were due to leukemia at about 29.7 percent. Brain cancer trailed at about one in four - 23.7 percent.

However, by 2014, the trends reversed with brain cancer representing 29.9 percent of all child cancer deaths.

Other common types of cancer among children listed in the report are bone and articular cartilage (10% in 2014), thyroid and other endrocrine glands (9%) and mesothelial and soft tissue (7.7%) which combined with brain and leukemia types of cancer made up 81.6 percent of cancers suffered by children that ultimately proved fatal.

The cases were pulled from the National Center for Health Statistics files and defined through the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision.

Trends were evaluated through the Joinpoint Regression Program.

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