Gen X, Millennials Face Higher Risk of Certain Cancers than Older Generations
Researchers aren’t sure why but say a combination of factors, including obesity, more sedentary behavior, common medications or chemical exposures, is possible.
Younger generations have a heightened risk of some cancers, new research found.
A study published Wednesday in Lancet Public Health found that Gen X and millennials are more likely to be diagnosed with 17 types of cancer, including nine that had been declining in older adults. Researchers aren’t sure why, but say obesity is likely a leading cause.
“What is happening in these generations can be considered a bellwether for future cancer trends,” said Hyuna Sung, a cancer epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society, who led the research.
Rates of colorectal cancer — one of the 17 types — have been rising among younger people for decades, a troubling trend that sparked investigation into other types of cancer.
Sung and her colleagues used cancer diagnosis and mortality data from two databases –– the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics –– to analyze cancer trends in people born between 1920 and 1990, who were diagnosed with cancer between 2000 and 2019.
The data included 34 types of cancer, nearly 24 million diagnoses and more than 7 million deaths. To get a better view of how cancer diagnoses and mortality rates changed in groups of people born around the same year — called a birth cohort — the researchers grouped people by birth year in five-year intervals. For example, people born in 1920 through 1924 were all one birth cohort.
Seventeen of the 34 cancers had increasing incidence in younger people. The risk was two to three times higher in people born in 1990 for pancreatic, kidney and small intestine cancers, compared to people born in 1955. Liver cancer diagnoses in women followed the same pattern.
