Cancer risk in Vietnam war veterans from the Korean Vietnam war veterans’ health study cohort - Original Research - 2023

Sep 24, 2026

Nationally representative cohort data from 2002 to 2018 were used to quantify cancer incidence among Korean Vietnam War veterans and to compare it with age-, sex-, and region-matched general Korean citizens. Standardized incidence ratios and 95% confidence intervals were calculated for all cancers and 31 organ-specific categories. Results showed an elevated overall cancer risk (SIR 1.07, 95% CI 1.06–1.08) and significantly increased risks for 22/31 organ-specific cancer categories, with the highest risk in malignant neoplasms of other parts of the central nervous system (SIR 1.71).

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages7

Reading Time18 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Methods

Data and participants

Results

Discussion

TYPE Original Research PUBLISHED 25 January 2023 DOI 10.3389/fonc.2023.1048820 OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Francesca Bravi, University of Milan, Italy REVIEWED BY Jason Wong, National Cancer Institute (NIH), United States Fabio Grizzi, Humanitas Research Hospital, Italy Georgios Mikellides, University of Nicosia, Cyprus *CORRESPONDENCE Won-Jun Choi [wjchoi@gachon.ac.kr](wjchoi@gachon.ac.kr)[ ](wjchoi@gachon.ac.kr)Jin-Ha Yoon ﬂ[yinyou@gmail.com](yinyou@gmail.com) †These authors share ﬁrst authorship SPECIALTY SECTION This article was submitted to Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention, a section of the journal Frontiers in Oncology RECEIVED 20 September 2022 ACCEPTED 04 January 2023 PUBLISHED 25 January 2023 CITATION Lee W, Park S, Kang S-K, Ham S, Yoon J-Hand Choi W-J (2023) Cancer risk in Vietnam war veterans from the Korean Vietnam war veterans’ health study cohort. Front. Oncol. 13:1048820 . doi: 10.3389/fonc.2023.1048820 COPYRIGHT © 2023 Lee, Park, Kang, Ham, Yoon and Choi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Cancer risk in Vietnam war veterans from the Korean Vietnam war veterans’ health study cohort Wanhyung Lee 1†, Soyoung Park 2†, Seong-Kyu Kang 1, Seunghon Ham 1, Jin-Ha Yoon 3,4* and Won-Jun Choi 1* 1 Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Gil Medical Center, Gachon University College of Medicine, Incheon, Republic of Korea, 2 Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 3 Department of Preventive Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 4The Institute for Occupational Health, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea Introduction: During the Vietnam War, several unknown chemicals, such as Agent Orange, were used in Vietnam by the military. Therefore, there have been continuous health concerns among the Vietnamese population and veterans exposed to these hazardous chemicals. This study aimed to investigate the risk of all cancers and also organ-speciﬁc cancers among Korean veterans of the Vietnam War. Methods: This study used a national representative cohort that included all Korean Vietnam War veterans as the interest group, with 1:4 age-sex-region-matched general Korean citizens as the reference group, from 2002 to 2018 . Agestandardized incidence ratios (SIRs) and 95% conﬁdence intervals (CIs) were calculated for all cancers and for 31 organ-speciﬁc cancer categories based on the medical facility visit data. Results: An increased SIR of 1 . 07 (95% CI, 1 .06–1. 08) was observed for all cancers among the veterans. There was a signiﬁcantly increased risk of cancer among 22/ 31 organspeciﬁc cancers, with 18 cancer categories showing a signiﬁcantly higher risk than all cancers. The highest risk was observed for “malignant neoplasms of other parts of the central nervous system” (SIR, 1 .71; 95% CI, 1 .51–1. 92) . Discussion: This study evaluated the risk of cancer among Korean Vietnam War veterans. Further studies are warranted to investigate various health determinants in the veterans as well as the Vietnamese population. KEYWORDS KOVECO, agent orange, vietnam war, veterans, cancer Frontiers in Oncology 01 [frontiersin.org](frontiersin.org) 1 Introduction The Republic of Korea dispatched over 300,000 troops during the Vietnam War (VW) (1) . There is an ongoing tragedy affecting the health of Korean VW veterans because of the various unknown chemicals used in the war. For exam

FAQs

What was the study’s main objective?

To investigate the risk of all cancers and organ-specific cancers among Korean Vietnam War veterans using the KOVECO cohort data.

How were cancer risks measured in the study?

The study calculated age-standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) and 95% confidence intervals for all cancers and 31 organ-specific cancer categories based on medical facility visit data.

What were the key findings about overall cancer risk and specific cancers?

Overall cancer risk was higher among veterans (SIR 1.07). Significantly increased risks were found for 22 out of 31 organ-specific cancer categories, with the highest risk for malignant neoplasms of other parts of the central nervous system (SIR 1.71).

Sep 24, 2026

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