United States: Generation X and millennials are more likely to be at higher risk of getting some types of cancer than previous generations, suggests a new large study out on Wednesday.
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The American Cancer Society (ACS) researchers in the Lancet Public Health journal aimed to look at 34 of the most prevalent cancers to conduct the study.
It was reported that the cancer occurrence rates remained to increase in successively younger populations in 17 of the cancers, such as breast, pancreatic, and gastric malignancies.
For eight of the 17 cancers, researchers found that cancer incidence rates rose for each successive birth cohort since 1920. For nine of them, incidence rates increased in younger age groups after the first declining trend in older birth cohorts.
What more does the study reveal?
According to senior author Ahmedin Jemal, the study emphasized that researchers need to determine the ‘fundamental causes’ in Gen X and the millennial age groups to comprehensively determine the growing cancer rates among young people.
According to Hyuna Sung, the lead author of the study, “These findings add to growing evidence of increased cancer risk in post-Baby Boomer generations, expanding on previous findings of early-onset colorectal cancer and a few obesity-associated cancers to encompass a broader range of cancer types,” as the Hill reported.
The study also highlighted the need to address the “underlying risk factors in Gen X and Millennial populations” to explain and address the ongoing rising cancer rates in the younger generation, as explained by Ahmedin Jemal, a senior author of the study.
Sung informed, “Birth cohorts, groups of people classified by their birth year, share unique social, economic, political, and climate environments, which affect their exposure to cancer risk factors during their crucial developmental years.”
“Although we have identified cancer trends associated with birth years, we don’t yet have a clear explanation for why these rates are rising,” he continued.
How was the study conducted?
It was a cross-sectional study employing data from over twenty-three million patient records afflicted by thirty-four varieties of cancer between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2019.
The study also collected mortality statistics involving over 7 million deaths from 25 different types of cancer during the same time frame. All of the people were aged from 25 to 84 years.
The scientists mainly focused on calculating the incidence rate ratios of each birth cohort, adjusted for the “age effect and period effect.”
As for the youngest birth cohort, 1990, the incidence rates varied from 12 percent higher than that of the birth cohort with the lowest rates for ovarian cancer to 169 percent higher than the rates of the cohort that had the lowest incidence rates for uterine corpus cancer.
The rate of cancer occurrence was twice to three-fold higher for total cancer incidence in the 1990 birth cohort compared to the 1955 birth cohort, with incidences of pancreatic, kidney, and small intestinal cancer.