Washington (USA) : Worldwide, the incidence of cancers diagnosed before the age of 50 has increased dramatically, a rise that began around 1990, according to a study. These early onset cancers include cancers of the breast, colon, esophagus, kidney, liver and pancreas, the researchers said. Potential risk factors for early cancer include alcohol consumption, lack of sleep, smoking, obesity and eating highly processed foods, the researchers said.
He said that while the sleep duration of adults has not changed significantly over several decades, children are getting much less sleep today than they were decades ago. Risk factors such as highly processed foods, sugary beverages, obesity, type 2 diabetes, sedentary lifestyles and alcohol consumption have increased significantly since the 1950s, which researchers speculate is accompanied by an altered microbiome. “From our data, we saw something called the birth cohort effect,” said Professor Shuji Ogino from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, US. “This effect suggests that each group of people born later (eg, decade-after) has a higher risk of developing cancer later in life, possibly because of risk factors they were exposed to at a younger age. It was,” Ogino said. ,
The study, recently published in the journal Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology, found that the risk is increasing with each generation.
For example, people born in 1960 experienced a higher cancer risk before the age of 50 than those born in 1950. The researchers predict that this risk level will continue to climb over successive generations. They first analyzed global data describing the incidence of 14 different types of cancer, showing an increased incidence among adults before the age of 50 from 2000 to 2012.
The team then explored available studies that examined trends in potential risk factors, including early-life risk, in the general population. The researchers found that early life exposures, which include one’s diet, lifestyle, weight, environmental exposures and microbiome, have changed substantially over the past several decades. He speculates that factors such as Western diet and lifestyle may have contributed to the onset of the cancer epidemic. The team acknowledges that this increased incidence of certain types of cancer is due, in part, to early detection through cancer screening programs.
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The researchers could not measure precisely what proportion of this increasing prevalence could be attributed to screening and early detection alone. However, they noted that an increase in the incidence of many of the 14 types of cancer is simply not possible because of better screening.