As cancer rates among younger adults continue to rise, a new report from the American Cancer Society says young women are now almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with the disease as men.
According to the report, which was published Thursday in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, the American Cancer Society estimates that more than 2 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer this year and over 618,000 will die from cancer-related deaths. Though the death rate has declined in recent years — in part owing to a decrease in smoking-related cancers and prostate cancers in older men — the numbers are rising for women under 65, who are for the first time more likely to develop cancer than men of their same age group. Cancer rates among women aged 50 to 64 now surpass those of men, and women under 50 now have an 82 percent higher incidence rate than men, up from 51 percent in 2002. The New York Times reports that six out of the ten most common cancers are rising, including breast, uterine, and colorectal. “These unfavorable trends are tipped towards women,” Rebecca Siegel, the study’s lead author and an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society, told the Times. “Of all the cancers that are increasing, some are increasing in men, but it’s lopsided — more of this increase is happening in women.”
The report also says that incidences of breast cancer, which account for roughly a third of new cancer cases among women, have been increasing around 1 percent a year between 2012 and 2021 with significant increases in women under 50 and in Hispanic American, Asian American, and Pacific Islander women. Cervical-cancer rates among women between the ages of 30 and 44 have also increased. Though it’s unclear why cancer is trending younger or more female, the report suggests higher obesity rates and “changing patterns in known exposures” may be contributing factors, along with other causes that are “yet to be elucidated.”
“Age remains the number one greatest risk factor for cancer overall, and that hasn’t changed. But we’re seeing some shifting,” Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society, told CNN. For men and women, “the only age group where we’re actually seeing an increase in cancer risk, in incidence going up, is under the age of 50.”