Trends and socio‐economic disparities in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia 2014–2022: An England‐wide cohort study from the <scp>UNCOVER</scp> group

To re-evaluate chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) epidemiology in the era of modern therapy, data were extracted from the English National Cancer Registration Dataset (NCRD). A total of 34 427 consecutive diagnoses of CLL were recorded (2014-2022), the largest European dataset on record. In addition to known associations with age, gender-ethnicity, multivariable analysis showed incidence rate ratio (IRR) variations with government region (IRR ranging from 0.78 to 0.94 vs. London), socioeconomic deprivation (1.06 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.02-1.10] for most vs. least deprived quintile) and IRR fall in successive calendar years (0.70 [95% CI 0.67-0.73] for 2022 vs. 2014). With a median follow-up of 74.4 months, 36.9% of patients had died, including 13.6% from blood cancer. 1-, 3- and 5-year overall survival (OS)/net survival rates were 90%/94%, 78%/87% and 67%/81%, respectively. Age, male gender, comorbidity and socioeconomic deprivation were independently associated with shorter OS and cause-specific survival (CSS), with OS-hazard ratio (HR) of 1.42 (95% CI 1.34-1.50) and CSS-HR of 1.28 (1.16-1.41) for the most versus least deprived quintiles. In addition, government region was independently associated with CSS, with HRs relative to London ranging from 0.84 (0.74-0.96) to 1.12 (0.99-1.27). Our findings reveal previously unreported disparities in CLL incidence and survival based on place of residence.