Abstract: Over the past 30 years, cancers diagnosed in adults under the age of 55 have risen sharply worldwide. Traditional DNA sequencing looks for inherited mutations, but it often fails to explain why healthy young adults are suddenly developing tumors. To investigate this mystery, researchers analyzed health profiles from over 154,000 young adults in the UK Biobank. They validated their findings using data from over 10,000 participants in the US All of Us Research Program. Instead of focusing solely on birth dates, the study calculated “biological age” by assessing blood chemistry, metabolic profiles, and protein markers to see how fast participants’ bodies were ageing internally.
The results revealed a clear generational shift: individuals born between 1965 and 1974 exhibited significantly more advanced biological ageing compared to those born between 1950 and 1954. Crucially, this internal “age gap”, where a person’s biological profile is older than their actual years lived, closely tracks an increased risk for early-onset solid tumors, particularly lung, uterine, and gastrointestinal cancers. By diving into organ-specific proteins, the researchers discovered that accelerated ageing in the immune system was strongly linked to early lung cancer, while advanced ageing in fat tissue correlated with colorectal cancer. This indicates that lifestyle and environmental stressors are accelerating wear-and-tear at the cellular level, creating a welcoming environment for early tumor development.
Get the full article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04448-w
