Cancer in young adults is rising — is a ‘Westernized’ lifestyle to blame?

By Brooke Kato

The cancer age gap is closing — to the detriment of younger generations.

A new study has shown that young, ordinarily healthy adults are being diagnosed with cancer at worrying rates.

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital saw that more and more people under the age of 50 are being diagnosed with cancer of the breast, colon, esophagus, kidney, liver, pancreas and more — globally — in a trend that took a sharp upward turn around the year 1990.

“From our data, we observed something called the birth cohort effect. This effect shows that each successive group of people born at a later time (e.g., decade-later) have a higher risk of developing cancer later in life, likely due to risk factors they were exposed to at a young age,” said Dr. Shuji Ogino, professor of pathology and physician-scientist at Brigham and Women’s, in a press release.

“We found that this risk is increasing with each generation,” Ogino continued. “For instance, people born in 1960 experienced higher cancer risk before they turn 50 than people born in 1950 and we predict that this risk level will continue to climb in successive generations.”

Cancer is a genetic disease — it’s caused by changes in genes that lead to cell division error and tumors. Some of these genetic changes are inherited, but the new study, published in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology, focused on environmental factors that cause damage to DNA and contribute to the cancer growth……More Here

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