Researchers in the United States have identified accelerated physiological aging in newer generations and linked it to a rising incidence of cancer among individuals under 55. The findings of the study, based on data from two major biobanks, were published in the journal Nature Medicine.
According to the experts, from 1990 to 2019, the global detection of cancer in patients under 50 increased by 24 percent. For those born in the 1990s, the risk of developing colorectal cancer at a young age is four times higher than for the generation born in the 1960s. In the U.S., the proportion of such diagnoses in people under 55 rose from 11 percent in 1995 to 20 percent in 2019. A similar trend is observed with uterine cancer and several other tumor types.
Traditional risk factors cannot fully account for this trend. Biologists have proposed using biological age as an integrated measure of the cumulative strain on the body. The authors analyzed data from 154,000 people under 55 from the UK Biobank and 10,000 participants from a U.S. research program. The scientists compared participants’ biological age with their chronological age and examined potential links to cancer diagnoses.
The study revealed that biological aging is increasing from one generation to the next. In the UK sample, those born between 1965 and 1974 showed an age gap that was, on average, 23 percent greater than those born between 1950 and 1954. In the U.S. database, the generation born in the 1990s exhibited a gap that was 92 percent larger compared to people from the second half of the 1960s, despite being the same chronological age.
Each increase in the age gap is associated with an 8 percent higher risk of developing any type of cancer. The likelihood of lung cancer rose by 57 percent, gastrointestinal tumors by 17 percent, and uterine cancer by 31 percent. According to the researchers, accelerated aging encompasses the effects of all known and unknown risk factors and may serve as a driving force behind the rising cancer incidence.
About the Author
