Premature aging. Could this perhaps be the reason for theincrease in cancer cases in the youth population, in any case before the age of 50. This is explained by research presented at the annual conference of the AAmerican Association for Cancer Research of San Diego. At a cellular level, more recent generations appear to age faster than previous ones. And therefore to see it arise Before the usual pathologies that are statistically more frequent in full adulthood or even in advanced adulthood.
On the other hand, it has been known for some time that aging is a fundamental element for the development of a neoplasm, due to the organism’s lower ability to repair itself the continuous DNA mutations to which endogenous and exogenous factors subject us. «Over 90% of the approximately 395 thousand new cancer cases registered annually in our country concern citizens over 50 – he explained to Corriere della Sera Franco Perronenational president of the Italian Association of Medical Oncology (Aiom) – recent studies, however, are also highlighting this in our country a progressive increase in tumors before this age, for reasons partly known and partly yet to be studied. We know that a cause can certainly be found in risk factors that have unfortunately become very common, even in children and teenagers: sedentary lifestyle, poor diet, overweight, obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse. Other reasons remain to be understood. For example, a lot is being investigated about some polluting factors».
Even this last aspect, that of polluting factors, has been investigated for some time: from environmental pollution to a living context increasingly hostage to chemical substances and endocrine disruptors which could be responsible for around 5% of cancer cases, rising to 10% in the areas in worse conditions. In the new study, data from 148,724 people between 37 and 54 years old, taken from the database UK Biobank so as to calculate the biological age through nine markers in the blood. In fact, biological age is not an abstruse construction but refers to actual health conditions, influenced by genetics and lifestyle, regardless of how many years ago one came into the world. The nine factors considered were albumin, creatinine, glucose, c-reactive protein as well as the percentage of lymphocytes, the mean corpuscular volume of red blood cells, the width of erythrocyte distribution, the alkaline phosphatase and the blood cell count. whites.
The results? According to the survey, subjects born from 1965 onwards show off, compared to those born between 1950 and 1954, the 17% more likely to age prematurely. In essence, their biological age would be higher than their chronological age. Not only that: scientists have also pulled the red thread from which we started. That is, discovered theAssociation between this dynamic of accelerated aging and the increased risk of cancer: each increase of one standard deviation in accelerated aging was reflected in a 42% increase in the development of a lung tumor at a young age, by 22% of a gastrointestinal tumor and 36% of a uterine cancer.
“Unlike chronological age, biological age can be influenced by factors such as diet, physical activity, mental health and environmental stressors,” he said. Ruiyi Tian, a student in Yin Cao’s laboratory at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, among the authors of the investigation – the accumulating evidence suggests that younger generations may be aging more rapidly than expected, probably due to previous exposure to various risk factors and environmental insults. However, the impact of accelerated aging on early cancer development remains unclear.”
Naturally further confirmation is needed to these preliminary conclusions but seem to confirm the thesis according to which exposure to factors that put the body and organs to the test (poor diet, little physical activity, excessive body weight, mental health and so on) accelerates aging and therefore increases the probability of pathologies that we would expect to see at higher ages. Despite progress and generalized comfort, the most recent generations, also due to the increase in pollution rates and who knows how many other factors need to be investigated, have worse habits and live in less healthy contexts on average.
«By examining the relationship between the acceleration of aging and the risk of early-onset cancers, we provide a new perspective on the shared etiology of early-onset cancers – concluded Tian – if validated, our results suggest that interventions to slow biological aging could be one new avenue for cancer preventionand screening efforts tailored to younger individuals with signs of accelerated aging could help detect cancers earlier.”
Tags: Juvenile cancers rise premature aging
