Malignant tumors are usually diagnosed in the older generation. This also applies to gastrointestinal cancer. However, in recent years, a dangerous trend has emerged - the age of patients is decreasing.
Rebecca Siegel, scientific director at the American Cancer Society, drew attention to this in 2008. At that time, many believed that the anomaly was associated with improved diagnosis and detection in the early stages. However, along with that, mortality rates among people under 50 years of age also increased.
In 2019, European scientists published the results of a large-scale study: they had analyzed data from almost 150 million people aged 20-49 years from 20 countries for 1990-2016.
According to the new report by American scientists, colorectal cancer has moved from fourth to first place among cancer causes of death in men and to second in women under 50 years of age.
The reasons for the surge in gastrointestinal tumors are unclear. It cannot be attributed to heredity only. In about ten percent of cases, bowel cancer is caused by genetics, while in the rest it occurs spontaneously.
This is partly due to the spread of certain risk factors among young people, such as obesity, the specialist says. Screening programs also influenced the statistics; cancer began to be detected more often at earlier stages.
Heritability is also important, therefore it is worth going to the doctor in advance if the same type of cancer has been diagnosed in several close relatives, and there are rare, atypical cancers that develop at a young age in the family.
Source: https://ria.ru/20240322/rak-1934753244.html
Photos are from open sources.
