In a study published in Medscape, researchers from the American Cancer Society noted that the cancer burden in the United States has shifted:

“The most noteworthy finding is the shift in cancer burden to young and middle-aged adults, especially women, who are usually the family caretakers,” Siegel told Medscape Medical News. “This is because of increasing incidence specifically in women for breast, uterine corpus, and liver cancers as well as melanoma. However, many cancers are increasing in young men as well, including colorectal, testicular, [and] kidney [cancers] and leukemia.”

For pancreatic cancer, specifically, the report found that incidence and mortality rates are increasing, with a 5-year survival rate of just 8% for the 9 out of 10 people diagnosed with pancreatic exocrine tumors.

The report also pointed out that Native American people have the highest mortality, including rates that are two to three times higher than those of White people for kidney, liver, stomach, and cervical cancers. Mortality rates of Black people for prostate, stomach, and uterine corpus cancers are double the rates of White people, and Black women are 50% more likely to die from cervical cancer.

The study found that overall cancer incidence in men has declined but has increased in women. In 1992, the male-to-female rate ratio peaked at 1.6, but was just about even, at 1.1, in 2021. Cancer rates in women aged 50-64 years have surpassed those in men (832.5 vs 830.6 per 100,000), and women aged 50 years or less have an 82% higher incidence than men (141.1 vs 77.4 per 100,000). That’s up from a 51% differential in 2002. The study also identified higher obesity rates as a contributing factor to cancer rates in people born since 1950.

From 2002 to 2021, cancer incidence declined slightly in younger men but rose nearly 20% in younger women, largely due to breast and thyroid cancers, which make up 46% of all cancers in the 50-or-younger age group.

Incidence rates continue to climb for common cancers, including breast cancers in women (up 1.6% from 2017 to 2021), prostate cancer (with the steepest increase at 3.0% per year from 2014 to 2021), pancreatic cancer (up 1.1%), uterine corpus cancer (up 1.3%), melanoma in women (up 1.7%), liver cancer in women (up 2%); and oral cancers associated with the human papillomavirus (increasing at 1.9% a year). The rates of new diagnoses of colorectal cancer in men and women aged less than 65 years and cervical cancer in women aged 30-44 years have also increased.