As cancer cases rise among young adults in the United States, a new study has identified 17 cancer types that appear to be more common in Generation X and millennials than older age groups.

Among adults born between 1920 and 1990, there is a significant difference between each generation in the incidence of cancer rates and cancer types, including breast, colon and rectal, pancreatic and uterine cancers, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal The Lancet Public Health.

“Uterine cancer is one that really jumps out where we see tremendous increases. It has about a 169% higher incidence rate if you’re born in the 1990s as opposed to if you’re born in the 1950s – and this is for people at the same age. Someone born in the 1950s, when they were in their 30s or 40s, saw a different incidence rate compared with someone born in the 1990s in their 30s or 40s,” said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer for the American Cancer Society, whose colleagues authored the new study.

  • FoxyFerengi@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    I wonder how much is due to the amount of plastic we’ve been in contact with. I cringe to think about all the plastic wrapped, or Tupperware stored foods I’ve microwaved over my lifetime. Or all the water from plastic bottles I’ve drank.

    • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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      4 months ago

      Most of it is likely explained by obesity. Solve that and then you can worry about plastics and Roundup if you like.

      • Atsur@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I wonder how much of the increase in obesity rates is attributable to having un-digestible microplastics stuck in our guts and bowels?

        • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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          4 months ago

          Are you suggesting that the excess weight deemed to be obesity is from plastics and not fat? And that both the toxicity of the plastic and its distribution in the body mimics what we would expect fat to do?

          It seems that regardless it would be very noticeable to doctors performing physicals if many of their obese patients were actually stuffed with microplastics instead. I’m sure you could find positive support for this in the medical literature if it had a modicum of truth to it.

          • phdepressed@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            Studying microplastics in humans is still new. There are in fact a few studies that roughyl support atsur’s allegation(based on a pubmed search for “microplastics obesity”). These studies don’t have plastic acting as fat but rather that plastic causes signaling for fatty acid synthesis and reduction of lipolytic signaling. So basically plastics signal for you to be fat and can make it harder to lose fat.

            Very minimal human data and not much that looks at direct cause-effect but there is at least a correlation that bears consideration.