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Faster Biological Aging Tied to Rising Cancer in Younger Adults

3 hours ago

A Washington University study in Nature Medicine links accelerated biological aging to higher early-onset cancer risk in adults under 55.7

Adults under 55 are being diagnosed with cancer more often than earlier generations were at the same ages, and a new study points to one possible reason: their bodies may be aging faster on a biological level. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report that people born in more recent decades tend to show measurable signs of being biologically older than their chronological age suggests - and that this gap tracks with a higher risk of cancer diagnosed early in life.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Medicine, drew on records from more than 154,000 young adults enrolled in the UK Biobank. The team compared each person's chronological age - the simple count of years lived - against their biological age, a measure built from changes in cells, organs, metabolism and other physiological systems. As the distance between those two numbers widened, so did cancer risk.

The study was led by Yin Cao, ScD, a molecular epidemiologist and associate professor of surgery and of medicine at WashU Medicine. It forms part of a broader international effort involving Siteman Cancer Center, based at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine, and Cancer Grand Challenges, a global program co-founded by the National Cancer Institute and Cancer Research U.K. Cao serves as co-lead of Team PROSPECT within that initiative.

Early-onset cancers - those found at or before age 55 - have been climbing across successive generations, with each newer cohort appearing to carry more risk than the one before it. That pattern pushed the researchers to test whether younger people are simply piling up cellular damage sooner than expected. The data suggested they are: more recent generations tended to show larger gaps between biological and chronological age, meaning their bodies looked older than their years even when their birthdays said otherwise.

Different organs, different cancers

The aging did not appear uniform across the body. Instead, faster deterioration in particular systems lined up with specific cancers. An immune system that registered as biologically older was associated with early-onset lung cancer. Fat tissue that appeared aged was tied to early-onset colorectal cancer. Broader analysis flagged patterns for lung, gastrointestinal, uterine and colorectal cancers as biological age acceleration increased.

Cao and her colleagues frame the work as a step toward spotting risk before disease develops. Measures of accelerated aging, they argue, could one day help doctors flag younger patients who face unusually high odds, opening the door to earlier screening or prevention.

"Our ultimate goal is to decode how modern environments become biologically embedded to drive cancer risk, transforming prevention from broad recommendations to personalized interventions," Cao said. "This brings us closer to identifying risk earlier and developing prevention strategies that are tailored to an individual's biology."

Why no single cause fits

Cao's group has spent years examining forces that can shape cancer risk over a lifetime, among them obesity, metabolic dysregulation, alcohol use, sedentary habits, poor diet quality and delivery by cesarean section. Each offers a partial clue, but none on its own accounts for much of the overall rise in younger patients.

That limitation drove the search for a wider lens - a way to capture how many separate influences might combine over time to make the body more vulnerable. Biological age offers exactly that kind of summary measure, folding numerous signals into a single readout of how worn the body has become. Support from Cancer Grand Challenges allowed the team to pursue the question across a far larger population than earlier studies could reach.

What remains unclear is what is speeding the process up. The researchers stress that they have not pinned down the drivers behind the generational shift, only that the shift is visible in the data and connected to cancer showing up earlier. Cancer has long been understood as a disease of age, because the longer cells divide the more chances they have to accumulate the damage that seeds tumors. The new results suggest that clock may now be running faster in younger people - and that the reasons why are the next problem to solve.

early-onset cancer, biological aging, cancer in younger adults, Nature Medicine study, Washington University, UK Biobank, colorectal cancer, lung cancer

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