OBJECTIVE: The transition of the countries to higher levels of Human Development Index (HDI) can affect the trend of cancer deaths. In recent years, Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) cancer death has increased compared with death caused by all other cancers. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between NHL cancer death rates and HDI. Furthermore, the trend of NHL cancer death rates has been clustered with considering the effect of HDI during 1990-2015.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The data of NHL cancer death rates of 188 countries were obtained from the Global Burden of Disease’s database between the years 1990-2015 (in 5-year intervals). First, the relationship between HDI and cancer death rates was assessed using the correlation coefficient. Then, the linear mixed model with a discrete random intercept was used to cluster the trends of death rates.

RESULTS: There was a significant correlation between NHL cancer death rates and HDI during 1990-2005 (0.228, 0.274, 0.245, and 0.154, respectively). Three groups of death rates’ trends were observed. Group 1 with lowest death rates includes countries with low death rates as well as low/moderate HDI. Countries with death rates similar to world’s average and high/very high HDI have been clustered in group 2. Countries in Group 3 with the highest death rates had low/medium HDI with high death rates.

CONCLUSIONS: The strength of the relationship between NHL cancer death rates and HDI decreased after 1995, so that this relationship was no longer significant between the years 2010 and 2015. According to the results of clustering, most of the countries with low/medium HDI had a slowly increasing trend of NHL cancer death rates.