Study Finds Cancer Incidence Increasing in Successively Younger Generations

A large study led by researchers at the American Cancer Society (ACS) “suggests incidence rates continued to rise in successively younger generations in 17 of the 34 cancer types, including breast, pancreatic, and gastric cancers.” ACS's website has the release.

Dr. Hyuna Sung, the study’s lead author, says that these findings “add to growing evidence of increased cancer risk in post-Baby Boomer generations…[W]e don’t yet have a clear explanation for why these rates are rising.”

Incidence data from “23,654,000 patients diagnosed with 34 types of cancer and mortality data from 7,348,137 deaths for 25 types of cancer for individuals aged 25–84 years for the period Jan 1, 2000, to Dec 31, 2019, from the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, respectively,” were used for this analysis.

Researchers found that “incidence rates increased with each successive birth cohort born since approximately 1920 for eight of 34 cancers. In particular, the incidence rate was approximately two-to-three times higher in the 1990 birth cohort than in the 1955 birth cohort for pancreatic, Kidney, and small intestinal cancers in both male and female individuals; and for liver cancer in female individuals.”