Study links younger adults’ faster biological aging with higher risk of early-onset cancers

Young adults appear to be aging faster than the previous generation, which could explain the rising early onset cancer rates. ZeynepKaya/Getty Images Researchers say younger generations appear to be aging faster than previous generations. They say the phenomenon may explain why certain cancers are rising drastically in young adults. The reasons for faster biological aging aren’t clear, but unhealthy diets, sedentary lifestyles, and exposure to carcinogens are likely factors. Younger generations are aging biologically faster than previous generations, which may have dire health consequences. A new study published in Nature Medicine on June 22 suggests that rapid cellular aging may explain why certain cancers have risen sharply in younger generations over the past decade. Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis say that cancer can develop when genetic damage has accumulated in cells. When DNA is damaged, it can transmit flawed instructions, leading to malfunctions in cell division. That disruption can lead to cancer. This type of damage is commonly seen as people age. Ketan Thanki, MD, a colorectal surgeon specializing in benign and malignant disease of the colon, rectum, and anus at the MemorialCare Todd Cancer Institute at Long Beach Medical Center in California, said the new research provides valuable information. “The study shows that using established markers of biological age, we have evidence that younger generations are aging faster than previous generations,” he told Healthline. “The study doesn’t pinpoint exactly why but points toward factors that research has been suggesting for years,” Thanki told Healthline. Why are young adults aging faster? The researchers cited a 2021 study that identified several factors contributing to faster biological aging. These included: obesity and metabolic dysfunction unhealthy diet prolonged sedentary time circadian disruption exposure to environmental chemicals However, the researchers noted that further studies are needed to determine why biological aging has accelerated in younger generations. “A better understanding of how generational differences in accelerated aging relate to early onset cancers is needed urgently,” the study authors wrote. “This question is central because early onset cancers show strong birth-cohort effects, with more recent generations experiencing higher risk as they age,” they continued. Younger generations have a higher ‘age gap’ To reach their findings, the researchers examined data on three generations of people listed in two data banks. They studied blood markers from more than 150,000 adults in the UK Biobank, comparing people born in the early 1950s with people born in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The researchers also examined health data from more than 10,000 adults in the United States’ All of Us research program, which includes people born from 1965 onward. The researchers compared people born in the 1960s with those born during the 1990s. Their primary metric was PhenoAge, a measure of biological aging based on chronological age and 9 blood biomarkers. The team used that metric to calculate an “age gap” score to estimate whether a person appears biologically older or younger than expected for their actual age. They found that younger generations appeared biologically older than the previous generations at the same chronological age. People born in the United Kingdom between 1965 and 1974 had a 23% higher standardized PhenoAge-defined age gap than those born between 1950 and 1954. Similarly, in the United States, people born during the 1990s had a 92% higher standardized age gap than those born between 1965 and 1969. Higher ‘age-gap’ linked to early onset cancer risk Using a subset of the data, the researchers examined whether the age-gap scores were associated with cancer risk. They discovered that people with higher age-gap scores were more likely to develop cancer before age 55. This was particularly true with cancers of the lung, digestive system, and uterus. The researchers added that every increase in age-gap score increased the risk of early onset solid cancers by 8%. The strongest association was for lung cancer, in which the risk rose by 57% They reported that the associations persisted even after controlling for factors such as: smoking obesity telomere length genetic predisposition Thanki said the trend is concerning. “Age-related morbidities — diseases that we have previously associated with the elderly — will become more and more common in younger people,” he said. “Beyond the burden on individual quality of life, this will lead to greater healthcare costs as a society and potentially even a shortening of life expectancy.” Thanki added that changes in how healthcare is approached need to be made. “We are already facing clinical and diagnostic challenges in younger adults, meaning unless we change how and how well we screen, we will miss more cases and see more patients presenting with advanced disease,” Thanki said. Cancer rates are rising in young adults In recent years, there has been a variety of reports noting the increase in cancer rates in younger adults. A 2023 study reported that early onset cancer rates increased by 79% globally from 1990 to 2019. A 2025 study noted that in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, people born in the 1990s face at least a fourfold higher risk of early onset colorectal cancer compared with those born in the 1960s. In January 2026, the American Cancer Society (ACS) reported that colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of death due to cancer for people under the age of 50 in the United States. This increase comes despite the fact that overall cancer mortality has declined by 44% over the past three decades for this age group. In addition, cancer rates for people over the age of 50 are also decreasing. Experts say there are a number of factors that could be causing the rise in cancer risk in younger adults. These include: higher rates of obesity greater consumption of ultra-processed foods and foods high in refined sugar lack of physical activity irregular sleep patterns exposure to carcinogenic chemicals There are lifestyle habits that younger adults can adopt to help lower their cancer risk. These include: a balanced, healthy diet with minimally processed foods regular aerobic and strength-oriented exercise limiting alcohol consumption avoiding tobacco use Experts say screenings are one of the most effective tools for combatting cancer because most cancers are treatable if they are detected early. “We really need to start rethinking our lifestyles,” said Thanki. “Our consumption of processed foods, alcohol, and environmental toxins, our levels of physical activity or inactivity, and what we consider healthy levels of body fat will all need to be modified.” “The best interventions are often the simplest, though not necessarily the easiest,” he added.

One of the biggest mysteries cancer researchers are trying to solve is why colorectal cancer rates are soaring among young adults.  Now the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among men and women under the age of 50, colorectal cancer has become an alarming outlier among a general decrease in cancer mortality in recent decades. But a paper published last month in Nature Medicine that examined the risk of early-onset cancer has provided a new clue, triggering a lively discourse in the science community—and beyond. A team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis set out to examine whether faster biological aging could be a factor that’s associated with an increased risk of several early-onset cancers, including colorectal cancer. The researchers found that younger generations of people in the U.S. and the United Kingdom appear to be aging faster biologically, as a result of a broad range of physical, social, and sociopolitical factors.  “Our findings suggest that accelerated biological aging is associated with a higher risk of developing multiple cancers earlier in life, specifically early-onset lung cancer, colorectal cancer and uterine cancer,” molecular epidemiologist Yin Cao, who led the work, said in a summary of the paper’s significance.  Cao is also one of two scientists leading PROSPECT, a team within the broader $25 million global Cancer Grand Challenges that was founded in 2024 and tasked with investigating the rise of colorectal cancers in younger adults.  Led by Cao, the researchers examined nine different blood biomarkers among people born after 1965 versus those born between 1950 and 1954, finding a higher likelihood of accelerated aging among the younger cohort. That could be key to understanding early-onset cancer as the median age of diagnosis is 67 years old, according to figures from the National Cancer Institute. SLOW DOWN AGING, SLOW DOWN CANCER? Though the paper’s findings must be validated, the team may have discovered a minimally invasive method for early cancer detection, along with risk-based targeted screening and even prevention measures. “There will be more work on validation—leveraging existing and under-utilised clinical data—as well as mechanistic understanding, and how we potentially even slow down biological aging in younger populations,” Cao said.  Even so, the buzz about the findings is notable. In the two weeks since the paper was published, 56,000 people have already accessed it and it’s the top-ranked among 132 articles of a comparable age published in the publication. UNDERSTANDING CANCER CAUSAL RISK FACTORS PROSPECT has brought together researchers across nine institutions in France, India, Italy, the U.K., and the U.S. The goal is to “unravel the intricate network of causal factors” that underlie the increase in early-onset cancer and reverse the trend, Andrew Chan, a physician-scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital who is leading the project with Cao, said in a video posted on the project’s website.  “We are in desperate need to really identify the causal risk factors for early onset colorectal cancer and try to identify the strategies to reverse that trend,” Cao said in the same video.  Various teams within Cancer Grand Challenges are advancing research into things like the causes of cancer, disparities in cancer among different demographics, and why some types of cancer are lethal or not.  “Cancer Grand Challenges is enabling us to ask fundamentally new questions about the origins of early-onset cancers and accelerate the discovery of risk factors by connecting population-level evidence with biological mechanisms,” Cao said in the summary about the recent research paper.

You might think that lifespans are getting longer and longer, but some experts think they’ve peaked. (In fact, UK life expectancies have dipped since the pandemic.)And according to a new paper published in Nature Ageing, people born between 1950 and 1954 are experiencing slower biological ageing than later generations. Speaking to Oncology Central, assistant porfessor Yin Cao, who co-authored the study, said: “Biological ageing isn’t just about the number of birthdays you’ve had — it reflects wear and tear happening inside the body at a cellular and molecular level. This can include changes that affect how cells and tissues function, such as chronic inflammation, weakening of the immune system and damage building up in cells over time.“Our findings suggest that some younger adults may be experiencing these biological changes earlier than expected, and that this could be linked to the rising rates of cancers seen in younger generations.”It comes after the BMJ Oncology found a “global surge in cancers among the under 50s over past three decades”.This paper found that the bigger the gap between someone’s chronological age (years) and biological age, the higher the cancer risk.What might that mean? This research used data from the UK Biobank, a long-standing project in which almost half a million participants have agreed to make their health data available to researchers, and the US’ National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) All of Us Research Program.It involved information from over 154,000 UK young adults and more than 10,000 US participants.Researchers worked out people’s biological age according to their systemic (whole-body) and organ-specific aging. They did this by looking at things like blood biochemistry markers and the levels of different kinds of proteins linked to certain organs. Then, they compared participants’ biological ages to their chronological ones. They found that people from the UK between 1965 and 1974 “had systemic aging that was 23% of one standard deviation higher compared with those born between 1950 and 1954”. And those born between 1990 and 1999 “had systemic aging that was 92% of one standard deviation higher compared with those born between 1965 and 1969”. Basically, that means older people’s biological ages seem closer to their chronological age.That may matter because in this study, the faster biological ageing seen among younger groups was linked to 8% increased risk of early-onset cancers, particularly lung, gastrointestinal and uterine cancers.And those with the most advanced biological ageing had a 15% higher risk compared to those with the least cellular wear and tear.Researchers hope they can help spot cancers earlier “If we can identify younger people with the highest cancer risk when they are still healthy, we can focus on prevention and early-detection strategies for the individuals who will benefit most from early interventions”, Cao told The University of Washington’s WashU Medicine.Dr David Scott, director of Cancer Grand Challenges – which was involved with the research – added, “Right now, we don’t have a definitive answer to what’s driving the rise of early-onset cancers around the world, but studies like this are helping us piece together the bigger picture, showing that cancer may be influenced not just by changes inside individual cells, but by wider changes happening across the body as a whole.”Related...3 Everyday Habits A GP Follows For Healthy Ageing And LongevityScientists Have Found A Protein That Fuels Brain Ageing, And They Can Counter ItA Modified Mediterranean Diet Fights Brain Ageing and Memory Loss

Researchers report that younger adults with older‑than‑expected biological ages are more likely to develop early‑onset lung, gastrointestinal and uterine cancers, but more research is needed.

As cancer rates continue to climb among people under 50, new research suggests ‘accelerated ageing’ could play a part.

Age fast, get cancer young: the ‘global surge’ hitting under-50s  The TimesUnder-50s age ‘faster than previous generations’ amid cancer surge  The TimesFaster aging in younger generations linked to rise in early-onset cancer  WashU MedicineBiological aging and generational shifts in early-onset cancer risk  NatureWhy more under-50s are being diagnosed with cancer than earlier generations  The Independent