Are younger generations more likely to get cancer than those before them? This question often comes up in public conversations, but it is also at the heart of recent and intense research activities. A study of unprecedented scope, published in the August issue of the journal The Lancet Public Healthhelps answer this for the particular case in the United States: According to the authors, led by epidemiologist Hyuna Sung (American Cancer Society), several forms of the disease appear more and more common among young people.
Thus, for Americans born in the 1980s and 1990s, the risk of getting cancer would be higher than previous generations for 17 cancers (breast, pancreas, kidney, colon, small intestine, leukemia, thyroid, myeloma, etc.). Conversely, the risk of around ten types of cancer – often linked to smoking – falls among younger people.
Specific to the situation across the Atlantic, these results cannot be extrapolated to the rest of the world, but several cancer pathologies see their incidence increase among those under 50 in many countries, also sometimes due to earlier diagnoses. A sign of the concerns of the scientific and medical community, the number of works published on “early cancers” (early-onset cancers) has almost doubled over the past five years.
Hyuna Sung and her co-authors analyzed the incidence and mortality (number of new cases and deaths per year per 100,000 people) of 34 cancers based on year of birth. They used data from national cancer registries and the National Center for Health Statistics in the United States, gathering information on more than 23 million patients affected by the disease between 2000 and 2019. They then estimated, from available data, the frequency and mortality of each of these pathologies throughout life, depending on the year of birth from 1920 to 1990.
Improved diagnosis
“For 8 of these 34 cancers, we find that the risk increases with each subsequent birth cohort since those born in 1920 [aux Etats-Unis]write the researchers. In particular, the incidence in women and men is approximately two to three times higher in the 1990 birth cohort than in the 1955 birth cohort for cancer. (…) kidney [+ 192 %] and pancreas [+ 161 %] and in women for hepatobiliary cancer [+ 105 %]. »
You have 69.2% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.