A new study has reported that an increasing number of adults under the age of 50 are developing cancer worldwide over the past decades, with this significant rise beginning around 1990. To explain this phenomenon, the research team from Brigham Hospital in Boston stated, "There is something called the cohort effect, meaning that each successive group of people born later has a higher risk of developing cancer."
The study was published in the journal "Clinical Oncology," and Professor Shoji Ogino, who supervised the study, said, "We found that this risk increases with each generation. We expect it to continue rising in successive generations." The research team noted that this phenomenon applies to nearly all types of tumors, including cancers of the breast, colon, esophagus, kidneys, liver, and pancreas.
The team compared the clinical and biological characteristics of cancer tumors before and after the age of 50 and found that early-life patterns, which include individual diet, weight, exposure to environmental influences, and gut microbiome, have changed significantly in recent decades. Thus, they hypothesized that factors such as the Western diet and lifestyle may contribute to earlier onset of cancer, especially since 8 out of the 14 types of tumors examined in the study are associated with the digestive system.
