Cancer in people under 50 years of age has been growing for decades. A macro study finally points to the big culprit: biological aging

The increasing incidence of cancer in young adults is one of the most debated topics in recent oncology. In recent years, exhaustive reviews have warned of an increase in diagnoses in those under 50 years of agealthough medical science had long been searching for the underlying mechanism that connects the dots between modern lifestyle and the early onset of this hated disease.

The answer. A new study recently published seems to have found a key piece of the puzzle, which is nothing more than that our cells are aging faster than our ID card.

This is the conclusion of research published in the journal Nature that indicates that accelerated biological aging is associated with a greater risk of developing early-onset cancers, especially solid cancers such as lung, stomach and also uterine cancer.

Two concepts. To understand the finding, we must first differentiate between chronological age and biological age. The first of these is immovable, since it is nothing more than the years that have passed since our birth. But biological age is flexible, since it is calculated by evaluating the physiological state of a person through blood biomarkers and metabolic profiles. It reflects how “old” our tissues and organs really are.

How to measure them. To measure this, Tian’s team used models already consolidated in scientific literaturesuch as PhenoAge and the Klemera-Doubal method. With these tools, they crossed the data of more than 150,000 adults from the UK Biobank and approximately 10,000 program participants. All of Us of the United States.

The result shows a dangerous imbalance. This means that those people born in more recent decades had a greater tendency to have a biological age higher than that corresponding to their date of birth. And this time “jump” has direct clinical consequences such as the appearance of cancer.

To be more specific, it has been seen that every time we have a person with a biological age higher than their corresponding age, they have an 8% higher risk of having early-onset solid cancer before the age of 50. If we compare the extremes, individuals located in the tertile with the greatest biological aging have a 15% greater risk of developing the disease compared to those in the tertile with the least biological wear and tear.

The context. The main thing is not to fall into alarmism, since, although it is true that cancer is increasing in the youngest people in society, it is also increasing in all remaining bands due to multiple factors such as general population aging and better screening methods that allow us to detect cancer earlier.

However, the specific data on early onset are undeniable, since large studies point to significant increases in thyroid, breast, colon, kidney and endometrial tumors in the 20 to 49 age group. Colorectal cancer, specifically, is the one that worries the most due to its escalation in young adults.

The lifestyle. That we are biologically aging much faster than we should is not magic, but rather it seems to be influenced by different factors related to lifestyle. These include rates of youth obesity, prolonged consumption of diets rich in ultra-processed foods, a sedentary lifestyle, and exposure to environmental toxins.

What this new work provides is the quantification of the damage, since these risk factors accelerate the biological clock. We must keep in mind that the human body is exposed to pro-inflammatory factors for more years from early stages of life, which makes it easier for DNA damage to accumulate faster than cellular mechanisms can repair it.

In Xataka | Experts agree about the sun and hair: “It is one of the most exposed areas and one of the most forgotten”