Spatial Explorative Analysis of Thyroid Cancer in Sicilian Volcanic Areas

In the most advanced countries the epidemiological transition has led non-communicable diseases to dominate the causes of death (ruling out the recent Covid-19 pandemic). Therefore, the spatial methodologies traditionally implemented to study infectious diseases have been also exploited to analyze those non-communicable diseases whose causes include environmental risk factors. In this work, we aim to explore the spatial distribution of thyroid cancer (TC) near Mt Etna (Sicily), a possible environmental risk factor for TC. Although numerous studies have already detected an increase in TC incidence in proximity of active volcanoes, none of them has included a geographic approach to investigate the phenomenon, so far. For this reason, we aim to implement a spatial analysis to explore the phenomenon. In particular, by georeferencing data from the Cancer Registry of Eastern Sicily, we provide a visualization of the phenomenon through geographical maps, highlighting areas with significantly higher incidence than expected. Subsequently, we exploit the local Moran’s I index to assess the presence of clusters of higher-risk areas, considering both the proximity to the volcano and the non-uniform distribution of the population across the territory. Our results seem to confirm the established belief that the presence of a volcano can lead to an increase in TC incidence.