Cancer more likely to affect younger people now: These are potential causes

Younger people are now more likely to develop cancer, a new study has revealed. Alcohol intake, sleep deprivation, smoking, obesity, and consuming highly processed foods were all potential risk factors for early-onset cancer. Since the 1950s, there has been a dramatic rise in risk factors such highly processed meals, sugary drinks, obesity, type 2 diabetes, sedentary lifestyles, and alcohol usage, which experts believe has coincided with changing microbiomes. In an attempt to understand why so many younger people are getting cancer diagnoses, researchers conducted extensive analyses of the data that was readily available in the literature and online, including details on early life exposures that may have contributed to this trend. Researchers blame the "birth cohort effect", which indicates that each subsequent group of people born later has a higher risk of developing cancer later in life, probably as a result of risk factors they were exposed to at a young age, according to Shuji Ogino, MD, PhD, a professor and physician-scientist in the Department of Pathology at the Brigham.