Photo credit, Kensington Palace/BBC Studios
- Author, Marie-Josée Al Azzi
- Role, BBC News in Arabic
Princess Kate Middleton’s announcement that she was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 42 shocked many.
No one expected that the Princess of Wales’s absence from public activities for several months would be due to a malignant tumor, and there were rumors that she had gone into hiding following the announcement of his abdominal surgery.
After weeks of speculation, she was forced to appear in a video and provide answers to concerned people around the world.
Following the announcement of the young princess, many returned to a study published last September in the British Medical Journal, which confirmed that the incidence of cancer in early life, that is, before the age of 50, had increased by 79.1 overall. % for the period from 1990 to 2019.
The number of deaths from early cancer increased by 27.7% between 1990 and 2019.
Researchers involved in the study predict that by 2030, the global incidence of cancer and early-life mortality will increase from 31% to 21%.
The researchers calculated that dietary risk factors such as high red meat intake, low fruit intake, high sodium intake, low milk intake, and alcohol and tobacco use were the main factors associated with early onset cancer.
Another study published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet found that cancer was the fourth leading cause of death among people aged 15 to 39 in 2019 worldwide.
It is in countries with the greatest socio-economic development that we are seeing the greatest increase in cancer diagnoses in this age group.
While most experts and doctors agree that certain dietary factors increase the risk of cancer, other experts emphasize that cancer is a complex disease that is influenced by a combination of factors, including genetics and exposure to various dietary, environmental and other factors over time . time of a person’s life. It is therefore unlikely that there is a single, simple explanation for this increase.
Is obesity to blame?
Several increasingly common cancers among young people in the United States are linked to obesity, according to a 2019 study published in The Lancet.
According to the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 39.8% of U.S. adults ages 20 to 39 are obese.
The study confirmed that half of obesity-related cancers are increasingly occurring among young people, compared with one in nine non-obesity cancers.
Experts agree that excessive consumption of processed foods, lack of exercise and regular alcohol consumption are factors that increase the risk of developing cancer.
Experts believe that the prevalence of these factors has increased due to modern lifestyles, which may explain why people under the age of 50 have begun to develop the disease in recent years.
In a study published by the US National Library of Medicine on its website, researchers found a possible link between a pregnant woman experiencing obesity during pregnancy and its effect on her baby later, causing cancer before the age of fifty. However, this theory still requires research to confirm.
Dr Daniel Huang, a hepatologist at the National University of Singapore, told the British medical journal Nature that these factors are not enough to explain the rise in cancers being diagnosed at a young age.
“Many have suggested that obesity and alcohol consumption may explain some of our results. But it looks like we need to dig deeper into the data,” he says, to understand the whole picture.
In fact, many people under 50 who eat healthy, exercise, are not obese, and are under 50 get cancer. How to explain this phenomenon?
When is the fruit formed?
Recent statistics show that gastrointestinal cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide, accounting for the largest proportion of cancers affecting people under 50 years of age.
A study published a year ago on the US National Library of Medicine website found that certain gut microbes may cause cancer because they can act as disease promoters or inhibitors.
While this phenomenon is partly due to the food we eat, it is also associated with the germs and viruses we are exposed to, such as Helicobacter pylori, hepatitis B and C viruses, and human papillomavirus, according to the same study.
Other experts have suggested that disturbances in the microbiome (the beneficial bacteria in the gut) may be caused not only by changes in diet but also by antibiotics, but research into the carcinogenic potential of antibiotics is ongoing and the results are inconclusive.
Epidemiologist Barbara Cohn of the Public Health Institute in Oakland, California, told the scientific journal Nature that research has shown cancer can appear many years after a person is exposed to carcinogens such as asbestos, which is used in cement, and cigarette smoke. . “If the latency period (at the onset of a lesion) lasts for decades, where should we start looking (to discover disease triggers)?
She notes that researchers need to collect data spanning at least 40 to 60 years and covering thousands of people to have a large enough sample size to draw conclusions about early-onset cancer.
Mr Cohn maintains a huge database of blood samples collected from about 20,000 pregnant women since 1959. Since then, researchers have tracked the cases of many of the participants and their children.
Cohn and Caitlin Murphy, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, tried to find factors that cause cancer in the early stages.
They found a possible link between early onset colon cancer and prenatal exposure to a synthetic form of progesterone, which is sometimes prescribed to pregnant women to prevent premature birth. However, this study needs to be repeated in other groups of people so the researchers can confirm their findings.
Dr. Kimmy Ng of Harvard University says certain environmental factors that people are exposed to early in life may play a role in their later development.
Specializing in gastroenterology, she studies the causes of the rising incidence of cancer among people under 50 around the world. Its main hypothesis concerns exposure in the womb, infancy or childhood, and the link between this exposure and cancer in young adulthood.
In an article published on the university journal’s website, she refers to a recently published high-profile paper on a possible link between microplastics and gastrointestinal cancer.
According to the American Cancer Society, lifestyle choices may play a role in cancer, as can exposure to environmental factors such as radon, air pollution, chemicals in the workplace or radiation emitted during medical tests or procedures.
Is prevention possible?
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 80,000 people between the ages of 20 and 39 are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States.
Cancer is the fourth leading cause of death in this age group, after accidents, suicide and homicide. Young women are more likely to develop cancer than young men, but both sexes have the same risk of dying from cancer.
Statistics from other countries around the world show a similar trend when it comes to the number of cancer cases in the same age group.
Faced with medical uncertainty and a lack of conclusive scientific research, are there ways to prevent cancer or at least minimize the likelihood of developing certain types of cancer?
All scientific and medical authorities agree on the steps that need to be taken to minimize the risk of developing certain types of cancer:
- Avoid smoking and exposure to cigarette smoke from others.
- Maintain a healthy weight, exercise and be physically active.
- Eat a healthy, varied diet, limiting your intake of processed foods and red meat and eating more whole grains and fiber-rich foods.
- Limit your time in the sun and avoid tanning beds.
- Practice safe sexual practices to minimize the risk of contracting HPV and HIV.
While there are many theories as to why cancer rates increase at a young age, the most popular is lifestyle.
Doctors Shoji Ogino and Tomotaka Ogai of Harvard University made a startling comparison, examining and comparing data from around the world to help doctors and scientists understand what’s going on.
Doctors who live and work in the United States but are originally from Japan told Cancer Research UK that comparing cancer rates between Japan and South Korea raises many questions.
The two countries are ethnically and economically similar, but Japan has not seen the same increase in early-stage gastrointestinal cancer rates as its neighboring country.
Japan is one of the few high-income countries where most people do not follow the Western diet, which is based on red meat and processed foods high in fat and sugar. The Japanese eat mainly fish, vegetables and legumes.
Most Japanese children walk or bike to school rather than by bus or car, giving them higher levels of mobility and physical activity than children in other countries.
The lifestyle in South Korea is completely different, closer to the Western lifestyle in the USA and Western Europe. South Korea has seen a sharp increase in cancer rates among young adults.
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