A worrying new study by the American Cancer Society has revealed that generation X and millennials are at more risk of developing many types of cancer than their predecessors. This is in line with a growing body of evidence which shows that some cancers, like those of the bowel, breast and pancreas, are becoming more common in young people.
This new study looked at data from almost 24 million cancer patients collected from US cancer registries over a 20-year period, beginning in 2000. The research team sorted the data according to cancer type, sex and birth cohort – in other words, the five-year period during which they’d been born. They also carried out a statistical adjustment to take into account the fact that, for everyone, the older you get the more likely you are to develop cancer.
