Just months after Louisville mother, Sarah Holm, 41, was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer for a second time, her 11-year-old son jack was also diagnosed with a different form of cancer after experiencing pain in his left shin.
An active baseball and basketball player, the family assumed Jack had shin splints. But it turned out, he had a bone tumor, a cancer known as osteosarcoma.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to watch in my life. I never wish it upon anybody,” said Sarah.
A new, large study by the American Cancer Society found that Generation X and Millennials are at greater risk of developing 17 of the 34 cancer types than previous generations.
These include breast, pancreatic, and gastric cancers.
The risk of death also increased for Gen X and millennials, particularly associated with liver (among females), uterine corpus, gallbladder, testicular and colorectal cancers, the study showed.
“These findings add to growing evidence of increased cancer risk in post-Baby Boomer generations, expanding on previous findings of early-onset colorectal cancer and a few obesity-associated cancers to encompass a broader range of cancer types,” Dr. Hyuna Sung, lead study author and a senior principal scientist of surveillance and health equity science at the American Cancer Society, said in a press release.
While the findings demonstrate a trend, they still don’t account for the specific causes.
“Birth cohorts, groups of people classified by their birth year, share unique social, economic, political, and climate environments, which affect their exposure to cancer risk factors during their crucial developmental years. Although we have identified cancer trends associated with birth years, we don’t yet have a clear explanation for why these rates are rising,” Sung said.
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In this latest study, researchers found that cancer incidence rates increased with each birth cohort born since about 1920 for eight cancer types. For pancreatic, kidney, and small intestinal cancers, the incidence rate was two- to three-times higher for those born in 1990 than those born in 1955. This was also true for liver cancer, among females only.
The level of increase in the incidence rate among younger generations changed by varying degrees depending on cancer type. For example, the risk for ovarian cancer among those born in 1990 was 12% higher than the cohort born in the year with the lowest incidence rate. But the chance of developing uterine corpus cancer was 169% higher for those born in 1990 compared to the birth cohort with the lower incidence rate.
“The increase in cancer rates among this younger group of people indicate generational shifts in cancer risk and often serve as an early indicator of future cancer burden in the country. Without effective population-level interventions, and as the elevated risk in younger generations is carried over as individuals age, an overall increase in cancer burden could occur in the future, halting or reversing decades of progress against the disease,” Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, senior vice president of surveillance and health equity science at the American Cancer Society and senior author of the study, said in a press release.
“The data highlights the critical need to identify and address underlying risk factors in Gen X and Millennial populations to inform prevention strategies,” Jemal said.
American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network president Lisa Lacasse pointed out that the data highlights the importance of affordable, comprehensive health insurance, which plays a key role in cancer outcomes.
She said ACS CAN is working to urge lawmakers to expand Medicaid in states that haven’t yet done so, and is advocating to make permanent the “enhanced Affordable Care Act tax subsidies that have opened the door to access to care for millions.”