Professor Andrew Beggs from the University of Birmingham runs a special clinic for young people with cancer and, like other experts, has noted that more and more people under the age of 45 are being diagnosed with some form of the condition.
“There are a number of reasons for this increase,” he told the newspaper Observer. “First, we are simply getting better at detecting cancer at earlier and earlier stages. In addition, there is special consciousness. Young people are much more health conscious than previous generations and are therefore more willing to seek help at an early stage when their symptoms first appear.”
This is good news, scientists say. If a cancer is left untreated for too long, it can spread through a patient’s body, with fatal consequences. “Detecting cancer at an early stage means treatment is more likely to be successful,” says Michelle Mitchell, CEO of Cancer Research UK.
The fact that young people are more willing to come forward for diagnosis and treatment also reflects the remarkable improvements made in cancer treatment in recent decades. “People no longer see cancer as an inevitable death sentence, as previous generations did,” Beggs added. “Nowadays it is seen as something that can often be cured. That gives them an extra impetus to come forward.”
Another factor involved in the increase in cancer rates in younger individuals is the hereditary predisposition to conditions such as colon and breast cancer. Susceptibility to some of these can be passed down through families, and the responsible genes can build up in populations as carriers live longer and have more children. “It is a selection process. People survive longer to pass these genetic changes on through generations,” Beggs said.
In addition, there is the prospect that some as-yet-undiscovered environmental factors may influence cancer rates. For example, rising levels of obesity cause rising cancer rates. In contrast, the sharp decline in smoking over the past fifty years has led to a large drop in the number of cases.
The good news for younger patients is that they can tolerate higher doses of chemotherapy than older patients, and so can receive stronger treatment regimens that are more likely to kill any cancer cells in their body. Professor Lawrence Young from Warwick University said: “Cancer survival is generally higher in younger people. Furthermore, an incidental finding of cancer during surgery for other conditions is often associated with detection of the tumor at an early stage, when subsequent chemotherapy is much more effective.”
However, according to Beggs, major improvements in detecting cancer at an early stage have been less effectively implemented in Britain than in other countries. “Take colon cancer. If you live in the US or Europe and have early symptoms you will get a colonoscopy very quickly, while in the UK there is likely to be a significant delay,” Beggs said. “At this stage we need to make real improvements.”