- The American Cancer Society says women under 65 are getting cancer at higher rates.
- Most cases are breast cancer, but female lung cancer diagnoses are also soaring.
- Racial disparities are a factor too: more Black women are dying of breast cancer.
Working-age women in the US are now more likely to get cancer than men of the same age.
A new report out Thursday from the American Cancer Society shows how the rate of women under the age of 65 developing more cancers has been increasing over time.
It finally crossed a threshold in this new report, which tracks cancer incidence nationwide from 1991 to 2022.
Cancer rates in women under 50 are especially stunning: they’re now 82% higher than for men the same age, signaling a dramatic, steady climb over the past two decades.
The biggest cancer risk for working-age women is still breast cancer, but researchers were alarmed to see female lung cancer cases are also ticking up.
“For the first time, if you’re a woman under the age of 65, you have a greater chance of developing lung cancer than a man,” ACS chief scientific officer Dr. William Dahut said in a briefing with reporters.
“This is, I think, really a transformational change.”
The trend, building for years, reached a tipping point in 2021.
Dahut says it’s due in part to how smoking gained popularity unevenly in the 1960s, with women smoking “heavily later on, more likely in the mid- to late-60s, while men peaked earlier.”
Still, around 20% of lung cancer diagnoses in women are not linked to smoking, and likely have more to do with environmental factors like radon exposure, air pollution, asbestos or heavy drinking.
Racial gap
The report emphasized that while there was major progress in cancer treatment over the 30-year study period, with roughly 4.5 million cancer deaths avoided nationwide from 1991 to 2022, there are still striking racial disparities in cancer detection, treatment, and survivability.
Though white women are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer, Black women are more likely to die from it, suggesting that both cancer screening and cancer treatment for people of color is subpar.
Native Americans shoulder an uneven burden of kidney, liver, stomach, and cervical cancers. Death rates for Black people with prostate, stomach, and uterine cancer are all twice as high as white Americans.
Cancer cases rising in young people
There is some good news in the report: overall cancer deaths across the US tumbled 34% in the 30-year period from 1991 to 2022.
Increasingly, young adults are shouldering the burden of cancer risk though. We’re seeing more colorectal cancer in people under 65, more cervical cancer in women 30 to 44, and more adolescent cancer among teens 15 to 19.
“Continued reductions in cancer mortality because of drops in smoking, better treatment, and earlier detection is certainly great news,” ACS epidemiologist Rebecca Siegel, lead author of the new report, said in a release.
“However, this progress is tempered by rising incidence in young and middle-aged women, who are often the family caregivers, and a shifting cancer burden from men to women, harkening back to the early 1900s when cancer was more common in women.”
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