A study has drawn attention for finding that "accelerated aging" — in which the body ages faster than its chronological age — lies behind the rise in cancer among people under 55. Aging itself is speeding up with each successive generation, the researchers said.
Aging Speeds Up Across Generations, Raising Cancer Risk
According to researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine on the 14th, the analysis grew out of a joint study conducted with Cancer Grand Challenges, an international cancer research initiative. The team examined biological data from about 154,000 people enrolled in the UK Biobank and roughly 10,000 participants in the U.S. National Institutes of Health's All of Us program.
The measure was the gap between chronological age, set by year of birth, and biological age, gauged from cellular, organ and metabolic function. The later the generation, the more sharply that gap widened.
In the British sample, people born between 1965 and 1974 showed a whole-body aging index 23% higher, in standard-deviation terms, than those born between 1950 and 1954. The gap was even more pronounced in the U.S. sample, where the aging index for those born between 1990 and 1999 came in 92% higher than for those born between 1965 and 1969.
The faster the pace of aging, the higher the risk of developing a solid tumor before age 55. Each increase in the aging index was associated with an 8% rise in early-onset cancer risk, and the group in the top tier of the index faced roughly 15% higher risk than those in the bottom tier.
The association was clearest for lung, gastrointestinal and uterine cancers, and the results held even after genetic cancer risk factors were separated out.
Immune and Fat Tissue Aging Split Cancer Types, With Colorectal Cases Rising in Young Adults
The type of cancer varied depending on where in the body aging had progressed. Severe aging of the immune system raised the risk of early-onset lung cancer, while severe aging of fat tissue increased the risk of early-onset colorectal cancer.
Findings from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), which analyzed about 28,000 colorectal cancer patients using cancer registry data from 10 German regions between 2003 and 2023, overlap with that pattern. Incidence among people in their 20s rose by an annual average of 3.3% for men and 3.9% for women, and increases of 2.2% for men and 2.0% for women were also confirmed among those in their 30s. Incidence among people in their 40s, by contrast, remained largely stable.
Yin Cao, the Washington University professor who led the study, said individual risk factors such as obesity, drinking, unbalanced diets and sedentary living could not fully explain the recent surge in cancer among younger people. Using measures of accelerated aging, Cao added, would make it possible to identify high-risk individuals early even while they are healthy and to build screening and prevention strategies tailored to a person's biological profile.
That does not mean managing lifestyle habits no longer matters. Maintaining a healthy weight, exercising regularly and eating a balanced diet are still cited as the most basic rules for preventing cancer.
