Study links accelerated aging to cancer risk in young adults

CNN
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Researchers looking for clues as to why some types of cancer are increasing in younger people say they have discovered an intriguing clue: a link to accelerated biological aging.

Aging is a major risk for many types of cancer, and the older you are, the more likely you are to be diagnosed with cancer. And experts are increasingly recognizing that age is more than just the number of candles on your birthday cake. It is also the wear and tear of the body caused by lifestyle, stress, and genetics, sometimes referred to as a person's biological age.

“We all know that cancer is a disease. Aging disease. But it's really spreading to younger generations. Therefore, whether the well-developed concept of biological aging can be applied to younger generations is a completely unexplored area,” said Dr. Ying Cao, associate professor of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The new study was presented Sunday at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting in San Diego.

Cao and her team looked at the medical records of 148,724 people aged 37 to 54 who are participating in a large data registry called the UK Biobank.

They focused on nine blood-based markers that have been shown to correlate with biological age.

These nine values ​​are An algorithm called PhenoAge It was used to calculate each person's biological age. Researchers determined accelerated aging by comparing people's biological age to their chronological age.

They then looked at cancer registries to see how many people in the group had been diagnosed with early-stage cancer, which researchers define as cancer that develops before age 55. Approximately 3,200 cancers had been diagnosed.

Researchers found that people born after 1965 were 17% more likely to show accelerated aging than those born between 1950 and 1954.

After adjusting the data to account for factors that the researchers believed could bias the results, We found that accelerated aging is associated with increased risk of cancer. The strongest associations were seen with lung, stomach, bowel, and uterine cancers.

Compared to those who aged least rapidly in the biobank sample, those who scored the highest had twice the risk of early-onset lung cancer, more than 60% risk of gastrointestinal tumors, and 80% higher risk of uterine cancer. It was more than % higher. cancer.

The study was not designed to answer the question of why these types of cancer appear to have the strongest association with accelerated aging, but Ruiyi Tian, ​​the graduate student who led the study, said I have some theories.

Tian said the lungs may be more susceptible to aging than other types of tissue. The regenerative capacity of the lungs is limited. Stomach and intestinal cancers are linked to inflammation, which increases with age, she says.

Cao said a strength of the study was that the researchers observed these signals in a very large number of people, but he acknowledged that the study had limitations.

For example, the people in the study were not followed for long periods of time. The blood test results are from his one test, so they only give a snapshot of the risks and are subject to change. Ideally, researchers would be able to follow the same group for years, taking blood samples along the way to get a more accurate trajectory of risk, she said.

“The ideal scenario would be to have blood drawn multiple times throughout a person's life, but this is not possible even in a biobank like UK Biobank,” Cao said.

She said this association should be tested in more diverse populations, as the influence of social factors related to racism also needs to be better elucidated.

Dr. Anne Blaise, who studies the effects of biological aging in cancer survivors at the University of Minnesota, said the findings could suggest better ways to discover who is at high risk of developing cancer. He said it was interesting because of its gender. young. Currently, young people without family history or other risk factors are not routinely tested for most types of cancer.

“We're seeing more and more cancers in young people, especially gastrointestinal cancers and breast cancer. And if we had a way to identify who was at such risk, we could recommend screening at a different time. You can imagine that,” said Blaise, a professor and chair of the Department of Hematology and Oncology at UM Medical College. school. She was not involved in the new study.

Brace said if we could find people who are at higher risk because their cells age faster, we could also target lifestyle interventions such as nutrition, exercise and sleep.

“There are some drugs that seem to be able to slow the acceleration of aging,” said Dr. Blaise, who is testing two of them on cancer survivors. Cancer survivors often experience accelerated biological aging, perhaps due to the after-effects of treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation.

The drug belongs to a class called senolytics. It is thought to target and eliminate damaged and aged cells.

At this point, it's unclear who will benefit from these drugs, but accelerated aging assessments like PhenoAge may one day help doctors identify the people who need them most. may be useful.

“It's super interesting. It's not prime time where we go out and prescribe drugs to people, but this is really, really important work,” Blaze said.