2024-08-01 08:56:43
(by Paola Mariano) (ANSA) – ROME, 01 AUG – Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) and millennials (born between the mid-1980s and early 2000s) have a higher risk of getting 17 types of cancer than previous generations. This is the worrying data confirmed by a new large study conducted by researchers at the American Cancer Society (ACS), in particular for 17 types of cancer, including breast, pancreatic and gastric cancers.
In addition to the number of cases, mortality is also increasing, for example for cancers of the liver (only in women), uterus, gallbladder, testicles and colorectal cancer.
The study, published in the journal The Lancet Public Health, is based on data on 23,654,000 patients diagnosed with 34 types of cancer and mortality data (7,348,137 deaths from 25 types of cancer) for individuals aged 25 to 84 years extracted from US cancer registries.
It found that incidence rates have increased for each successive birth cohort since 1920 for eight of the 34 cancer types. Specifically, the incidence rate was about two to three times higher in the 1990 birth cohort than in the 1955 birth cohort for pancreatic, kidney, and small-bowel cancers in both males and females. In June, a study in the journal Jama Network Open showed an upward trend among Generation X and Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964) for several cancers. The new study shows that incidence rates have increased in younger cohorts but decreased in older birth cohorts for nine cancers, including breast cancer, uterine cancer, colorectal cancer, and gastric cancer. For example, the incidence of ovarian cancer among those born in 1990 increased by 12 percent compared with the birth cohort with the lowest incidence rate; the incidence of cervical cancer by 169%. Also, mortality rates increased in successively younger birth cohorts. “These findings add to the growing evidence of an increased cancer risk in post-Baby Boomer generations, expanding previous findings on some obesity-related cancers to include a broader range of cancer types,” says lead author Hyuna Sung. According to Massimo Di Maio, president-elect of the Italian Association of Medical Oncology (Aiom), “lifestyles are crucial to explain the increase recorded in younger age groups; many experts agree that the increase is due to a different exposure to environmental and behavioral risk factors. On this increase – he says – definitive published data are not yet available in Italy, but it is an area on which we are working together with the Cancer Registries.
However, we can say that in clinical practice many oncologists are recording cases of cancer among the youngest quite frequently and also for neoplasms that until now have been characterized by an onset at a later age”. Fortunately, oncology screening data in Italy are improving, even if the target of 90% by 2025 requested by European institutions is still far away, comments Francesco Cognetti, President of the Federation of Oncologists, Cardiologists and Hematologists (Foce). In 2023, in fact, 55% of the target population participated in breast cancer, 34% in colorectal cancer and 41% in cervical cancer, according to data recently published by the National Screening Observatory. (ANSA).
2024-08-01 08:56:43