Study Identifies Cancer Types With Increasing Early-onset Diagnoses

The largest increases were found in breast, colorectal, endometrial, pancreatic, and kidney cancers.

Early-onset cancers, or cancers diagnosed in individuals under the age of 50, are rising in the United States. While the exact reasons for earlier incidence remain unclear, a new study has identified that the largest increases in early-onset cancer diagnoses in the United States were for cancers of the breast, colon and rectum, endometrium, pancreas, and kidney.

The research was published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).

Meredith Shiels, PhD, MHS

The findings may have implications for early-onset cancer prevention and screening efforts, as well as for understanding why cancers are increasing in younger populations, according to the study’s first author, Meredith Shiels, PhD, MHS, a senior investigator in the Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch of the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.

For this study, Dr. Shiels and colleagues analyzed cancer incidence from 2010 to 2019 using data from the United States Cancer Statistics database, and cancer mortality from 2010 to 2022, using national death certificate data from the National Center for Health Statistics. To help refine the results, early-onset age groups were defined as those between 15-29, 30-39, and 40-49; late-onset age groups included those between 50-59, 60-69, and 70-79.

Among 2,020,829 cases of early-onset cancer diagnosed between 2010 and 2019, 14 cancer types had significantly increasing incidence rates in at least one early-onset age group.

The incidence of five of these cancer types increased in at least one early-onset age group between 2010 and 2019 without corresponding increases in any late-onset age group:

  • melanoma
  • plasma cell neoplasms
  • cervical cancer
  • stomach cancer
  • cancer of the bones and joints

The remaining nine cancer types had significantly increasing incidence in at least one early-onset and one late-onset age group:

  • female breast cancer
  • colorectal cancer
  • kidney cancer
  • testicular cancer
  • uterine cancer
  • pancreatic cancer
  • precursor B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma
  • diffuse large B-cell lymphoma
  • mycosis fungoides/Sézary syndrome

Ten of the 14 cancer types with increasing incidence did not exhibit increasing mortality for any age group. Four cancer types, however, also had increasing mortality rates in at least one age group:

  • testicular cancer
  • uterine cancer
  • colorectal cancer
  • cancer of the bones and joints

The greatest increases in the number of early-onset diagnoses in 2019 compared to what was expected based on 2010 incidence rates were seen in:

  • female breast cancer
  • colorectal cancer
  • kidney cancer
  • uterine cancer

Together, increases in these four cancer types accounted for more than 80% of the additional cancer diagnoses in 2019 compared with 2010

Dr. Shiels noted that an important feature of the analysis was the comparison of incidence trends between early-onset and late-onset age groups, which could provide clues about the factors that contribute to cancer development.

“The increasing incidence of many cancer types in younger and older age groups suggests that there may be risk factors that impact cancer development across ages or advances in screening or imaging technologies that allow cancers to be detected more frequently than before,” she said.  “Understanding which cancers are increasing in younger age groups, and whether those cancers are also increasing among those at older ages, will inform future studies focused on identifying the drivers of rising rates.”