Maybe Michael Lopez should move.

Because Lopez, a Mexican American Kansas City, Kan., junior, lives in a lower-middle-income neighborhood with a small Hispanic population, he may have a greater chance of contracting certain types of cancer than he would if he lived in a low-income, densely Hispanic community, according to a recent study.

Jonathan D. Mahnken, an assistant professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center and one of the study’s three authors, said by e-mail that the study was part of a cluster of research that has been done on what has been called the “Hispanic paradox.”

The term “Hispanic paradox” was possibly coined in the mid-1980s when a study found that Hispanics in the Southwest had lower rates of various chronic illnesses than non-Hispanic whites, despite a relative disadvantage in income and health care coverage, according to author Paul McFedries’ Web site, www.wordspy.com.

Since then, researchers have discovered cancer rates to be 33 percent lower in Hispanics than in non-Hispanic whites and cancer mortality rates to be 38 percent lower, according to Mahnken’s study.

Mahnken said the purpose of the study was to find whether these rates decreased among Hispanics who had assimilated into mainstream culture, living in middle-class neighborhoods with a Hispanic population of less than 20 percent.

Mahnken began working on the study after the National Institutes of Health gave a grant to the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in 2003 to research the “Hispanic paradox.”

Karl Eschbach, associate professor, and James S. Goodwin, professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, the other authors, came up with the idea for the study and asked Mahnken, who was a research associate at the school, to be the statistician. When Mahnken came to the Med center last year, he continued his work until the study was published this year.

The researchers compared data of cancer cases with U.S. Census Bureau data to determine how various cancer rates fluctuated between Hispanics from predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods (which roughly corresponded to lower incomes) to Hispanics from predominantly non-Hispanic neighborhoods (which roughly corresponded to middle and higher incomes).

They looked at five common types of cancer: lung cancer, colorectal cancer, female breast cancer, prostate cancer and cervical cancer. Mahnken said they found a general decrease in the number of Latinos with cancer in Hispanic neighborhoods compared with non-Hispanic neighborhoods.

But the results varied significantly among the five types of cancer. Cervical cancer rates actually increased in Hispanic neighborhoods. Prostate cancer incidences in Latinos were about the same regardless of neighborhood. The three other types of cancer showed a general trend of increasing in Latinos as the percentage of Hispanics living in their neighborhood decreased.

In essence, this study shows that lower cancer rates among Hispanics dissipate with economic and ethnic assimilation into mainstream society.

Mahnken listed variants in diet, tobacco use, exercise, alcohol intake, exposure to pollutants and stress as possible disparities between Hispanics living in non-Hispanic communities and those living in Hispanic communities.

“Unfortunately, our data did not have these measures,” Mahnken said. “But we feel that our results point toward the need for future studies.”

Michael Lopez said he was surprised by the results of the study.

“I was expecting it to be much higher in highly Hispanic communities, because they probably have less resources,” he said.

Victor Aguilar, president of the Hispanic American Leadership Organization, was also surprised by the results of the study at first, but said the results could probably be attributed to the type of food people eat.

“I guess you could say my family was lower-income,” said Aguilar, a Mexican-American Dodge City sophomore. “My mom made everything herself. That’s something you don’t see among the middle and higher class. They have the money to go out to fast food restaurants every day. As we know, fast food isn’t the healthiest thing in the world.”