Over the past 10 years, rates of colorectal cancer among 25 to 49 year olds have increased in 24 different countries, including the UK, US, France, Au

'These are people in the prime of life': The worrying puzzle behind the rise in early-onset cancer

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2024-10-05 15:00:03

Over the past 10 years, rates of colorectal cancer among 25 to 49 year olds have increased in 24 different countries, including the UK, US, France, Australia, Canada, Norway and Argentina.

The investigation's early findings, presented by an international team at the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) congress in Geneva in September 2024, were as eye-catching as they are concerning.

The researchers, from the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the World Health Organization's (WHO's) International Agency for Research on Cancer, surveyed data from 50 countries to understand the trend. In 14 of these countries, the rising trend was only seen in younger adults, with older adult rates remaining stable.

Breast cancer is one form of cancer where the trend is apparent. A new report from the ACS found that while deaths from breast cancer in women have dropped by around 10% in the past decade, incidence rates are rising by 1% per year overall – and 1.4% per year for women under the age of 50.

Based on epidemiological investigations, it seems that this trend first began in the 1990s. One study found that the global incidence of early-onset cancer had increased by 79% between 1990 and 2019, with the number of cancer-related deaths in younger people rising by 29%. Another report in The Lancet Public Health described how cancer incidence rates in the US have steadily risen between the generations across 17 different cancers, particularly in Generation Xers and Millennials.