Cancer risk growing among Gen X and millennials for 17 types of cancer

They also identified that he younger generation is more prone to some cancers. 
 
Of the 17 types the Same Lancet Public Health study also reported that Gen X and millennials are more likely to be diagnosed with nine types of cancer that used to be on the decline among older population. It is not clearly understood, but obesity is most probably a major predisposing factor. 
 
From speaking with Hyuna Sung, a cancer epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society that spearheaded this study, it is evident that, ‘‘what is happening in these generations could be seen as a fore runner of future Cancer trends. ’’ 
 
The incidence of one out of the 17 cancers is increasing in the young population for several decades, and that led to the investigation of other types of cancers. 
 
Sung and her partners employed the information on diagnosis and mortality of cancer derived from the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries and the U. S. National Center for Health Statistics to analyze the occurrence of cancer in people born between 1920 and 1990, and diagnosed of cancer between the years 2000 and 2019. 
 
Thirty-four forms of cancer are detectable by the data, the number of which is approximately 23. 8 millions, and the death rate being over 7 millions. Since the goal was to capture how the task of cancer diagnoses and deaths evolved in groups of people born in the same year known as birth cohorts, individuals were divided in households by birth year in five-year increments. For instance, population born in 1920 to 1924 were in the same birth cohort. 
 
It described that 17 of the 34 cancers had rising trend in incidence in younger population. This made it two to three times higher in people born in 1990 as compared to those born in 1955 in the cases of Pancreatic, kidney, and small intestine cancers. When it came to liver cancer diagnosis among women, the same trend was observed. 
 
“The one thing it teaches us is that something happened that altered for a subgroup of people who were born after this point in time,” said Dr. Andrea Cercek a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and who did not participate in the study. 
 
After declining for decades, these types of cancers ​​have begun to climb again:After declining for decades, these types of cancers ​​have begun to climb again: 
 
Colorectal 
Endometrial 
Non-cardia gastric 
Gallbladder 
Ovarian 
Testicular 
Anal 
Estrogen-receptor positive breast cancers 
A kind of cancer known to be associated with HIV and this is called Kaposi sarcoma 
 
From the above tabulations, the study concluded that mortality reduced or was constant in younger generations in most of the cancers, though mortality rate elevated in young ages for endometrial, intrahepatic bile duct, gallbladder, colorectal and testicular cancers, together with liver cancer in women. 
 
Cancer of the endometrium was reported to be the most rapidly increasing type of cancer either in diagnosed cases or mortality. 
 
“That was a sobering finding,” summed up Sung. As for many kinds of cancer, many of them are on the increase; strictly speaking, mortality rates do not rise simultaneously because we are treating them much better today. 
 
Some of the cancers identified have higher trends in young people but are not very common, and hence, though rates have risen, the actual incidences are comparatively low. 
 
“It is clearly happening,” Brawley stated, to the effect that there has been a steady rise of young persons presenting with cancer that the majorities of the oncologist he is aware of can confirm to witnessing the trend. 
 
“In the 90s, only a tenth of colon cancer patients were below the age of 50, but now we have a fifth fighting this disease below 50 while the remainder are above the age”, he stated. 

Focusing on the generation with specific birth conditions gives significant insights into the factors behind increased rates of specific cancers among young people. 
 
‘All of these cancers are associated with obesity’, The latter is already the second leading cause of cancer currently next to the use of tobacco products as noted by Dr. Otis Brawley, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Oncology and Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University and was not involved in the recent study. 

Obesity in America is consequently tied to about 20 percent of all the cancers diagnosed in the U. S. , as per the American Cancer Society. The prevalence of obesity in the nation did not alter much in the 1960s and 1970s but rose rapidly after that. While percentage of adults who had obesity in 1980 based on data obtained from the Surgeon General was 13%, it was 34% in 2008. 
 
Children were also affected with an increase in obesity level from 5% to 17% within the same period of time. now over 40 percent of the American Adult population is classified as obese and approximately 20 percent of children and adolescents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
 
If obesity is to blame then it has been playing only a contributory rather a clearly causal role amidst several other lifestyle and environmental predictors that has given rise to the trend. Other options include: one, could be more extended periods of sitting or inactivity: or, it could be something in the food or water: could it be medications the population takes or chemicals that users come across or chemical substances that the users employ, the specialists said. 
 
Another factor that has been raised as having a connection to the problem is the use of antibiotics in large quantities. It is, therefore, evident that antibiotics alter the gut microbiota, which in turn is a risk factor for CRC. Thus, as beneficial as antibiotics are when it comes to a number of bacterial infections, they are quite commonly misused and taken for conditions that are not bacterial or that do not call for antibiotics. 
 
“It is a long list of things we are perhaps investigating,” Cercek added. List antibiotics as one of the main offenders on the list. 
 
They are yet to establish what has contributed to emergence of such cancers among young adults. Concerning obesity and antibiotics, these are the main culprits, but “it is impossible to disregard other chemicals and chemical substances,” Brawley continued.