The chances of surviving cancer have improved for many patients. But patients ages 15 to 45 haven't seen as much of an improvement as older people and younger children. A group of cancer researchers used sarcoma, a common type of cancer among young adults, to look at survival trends and their causes.

What the researchers wanted to know: Has the chance of survival improved less for young adults with sarcoma than for other people? If so, why?

What they did: The researchers used data on more than 38,000 people with soft-tissue or bone sarcomas who were diagnosed between 1975 and 1998. The data came from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program. The researchers thought one reason young adults' cancer survival rates might not be improving as fast as other people's might be that young folks aren't as likely to take part in clinical trials, so they also analyzed information on the participants in trials on sarcoma between 1997 and 2002. Note that the time periods only barely overlap, so for the most part, the people in the cancer registry and the people in the trials were not the same people; the researchers just compared age groups.

What they found: The survival rate for bone and soft-tissue sarcomas (except for Kaposi sarcoma, which is associated with AIDS) improved the least among patients ages 20 to 40. The proportion of patients who took part in clinical trials was closely correlated to the gains (or losses) in survival rates. Here's an example, but it has a lot of numbers, so pay attention. First, the little kids: 27 percent of 5-to-9-year-olds with bone sarcomas took part in clinical trials, and between 1975 and 1998, their chance of surviving five years improved by an average of 3 percent a year. On the other hand, only 1 percent of people ages 30 to 34 with bone sarcomas took part in clinical trials, and their chance of survival improved by an average of less than half a percent a year. The exception to these trends is Kaposi's sarcoma (KS); the highest participation rates in trials of KS were for 35-to-39-year-olds, and 30-to-40-year-olds had the biggest gains in survival. That could be because of the national push to get people with HIV and AIDS into clinical trials.

What the study means to you: This is only one possible reason why young adults haven't made as much progress in cancer survival. For example, people ages 18 to 44 are much less likely to have health insurance than younger and older people. But if the researchers are right, getting more young adults into clinical trials might improve the chances of survival—not just for the people who are actually in the trials but for others who benefit from the research.

Caveats: This is only one cancer; results might be different for others.

Find out more: The National Institutes of Health hosts clinicaltrials.gov, where you can search for clinical trials by disease, location, age, and other characteristics. A search for sarcoma and adults comes up with 108 trials, most of which are recruiting patients.

Read the article: Bleyer, A., et al. "National Survival Trends of Young Adults With Sarcoma." Cancer. Published online March 28, 2005. Print issue date: May 1, 2005.