Scientists are baffled by the sudden rise in the cancer diagnosis rate that is affecting more and more young Americans from across the United States.
While most cancers in the United States are diagnosed in people aged 65 years and older, a new study found that a concerning trend shows younger Americans, particularly women, are becoming more and more susceptible to the illness. The biggest rates were found with gastrointestinal, endocrine, and breast cancers.
Rise in Cancer Diagnosis Among Younger Americans
The study, published in JAMA Network Open on Wednesday, revealed that while cancers among older adults have steadily declined, cancers among younger people below 50 have slightly increased. The largest increases were found among patients aged 30 to 39.
In a statement, the director of the Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology Program at New York University Lagone's Perlmutter Cancer Center, Paul Oberstein, said that the younger American population has had less focus on cancer research. As their number grows, it becomes even more crucial to conduct more research to understand the situation, as per the Washington Post.
Oberstein noted that if some younger Americans have an increased risk of cancer, the concern as they age is that this risk may propagate. The medical professional added that if scientists cannot understand the situation and what is causing the risk, there is nothing they can do to change it, and it will become an even bigger challenge.
While there is no clear indication yet as to why cancer is starting to propagate among young Americans, experts argue several possible explanations exist. These include rising obesity rates and lifestyle factors such as drinking alcohol, smoking, sleeping poorly, and being sedentary.
They also believe that environmental factors, such as pollution exposure and carcinogenic chemicals, could have affected the trend. The researchers of the new study analyzed data from more than 560,000 patients in the United States diagnosed with early-onset cancer between 2019 and 2019.
Dangers of the Situation
The researchers found 34,233 early-onset cancer cases, defined as cancers that affect people younger than 50 years, in women in 2010. But in 2019, this number went up by 4.35% to 35,72. The rise comes as among men, cancer cases dropped by 4.91% from 21,818 in 2010 to 20,747 in 2019, according to CNN.
While the rate of cancer diagnosis among adults 50 and older has decreased, the rate rose for adults in their 30s and remained stable among those under 50. Researchers then looked at cancer trends for younger adults by race and discovered that early-onset cancers affected American Indian or Alaska Natives, Asians, and Hispanics, disproportionately.
A surgical oncologist and chief of medicine at Saint John's Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, California, Dr. Anton Bilchik, said they are aware of the rise in colorectal cancer in adults younger than 50. However, he said that they were now yet aware that the unusual cancers were also on the rise, said Yahoo Life.
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