Study reveals almost 80% rise in cancers in people under age of 50 in last 30 years

Scientists have long known that cancer cases among adults younger than 50 have been on the rise in many parts of the world, Report informs, citing CNN.

But a new study suggests that certain types of cancer – breast, tracheal, bronchus and lung, stomach, and colorectal – have caused the most disease and death in this younger age group.

Globally, from 1990 to 2019, new cancer cases among younger ages increased sharply by about 79% overall, according to the study published Tuesday in the journal BMJ Oncology.

The new study included data on early-onset cancer, defined as cancer cases diagnosed in people from 14 to 49 years old, for 29 different cancer types across 204 countries, between 1990 and 2019. The data came from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Global Burden of Disease database.

The researchers found that the global number of new cancer cases among ages 14 to 49 increased by 79.1% from 1990 to 2019, climbing from a total of 1.82 million cancer diagnoses in that age group in 1990 to 3.26 million in 2019.

Among those cancer cases, early-onset breast cancer had the highest incidence while a type of head and neck cancer called nasopharyngeal cancer and prostate cancer appeared to have the fastest increases in incidence since 1990. The researchers found that early-onset liver cancer showed the sharpest decline during that time.

The data also revealed that the global number of cancer deaths among this younger age group increased by 27.7%, rising from 0.83 million lives lost in 1990 to 1.06 million in 2019. While that absolute number of deaths climbed, when the researchers standardized the cancer death rates by age there was a slight decrease.

That’s important to note, since the absolute numbers do not account for changes in demographics such as increases in population size or aging of the population.