Australia isn’t the only country seeing higher rates of cancer in young people either. Large amounts of data from US cancer registries show an even more pronounced trend.
Associate Professor Dan Buchanan is trying to find out why Australia’s bowel cancer rates are so high compared to the rest of the world.
“The statistics around early onset bowel cancer are really alarming,” Dr Buchanan says.
It’s a shift he can see just by looking at a tumour’s DNA mutations.
“In the youngest group of people that developed early onset colorectal cancer, we’re seeing a much higher proportion that have a particular type of DNA damage pattern,” he says.
That generational difference is so pronounced, he says he can tell whether a person is young or old from their tumour’s DNA.
“It’s like a fingerprint; something’s happened. It’s dramatic,” Dr Buchanan says.
He says it suggests that there are factors or “exposures” that are contributing to an earlier diagnosis age for a group of colorectal cancers.
What is causing this generational damage however is less specific โ but scientists are starting to get a clearer understanding.
Cows Farting? pic.twitter.com/hHMQAt7hj4
— โSudden And Unexpectedโ (@toobaffled) July 7, 2025
They are still Baffled ๐ค
— โSudden And Unexpectedโ (@toobaffled) July 7, 2025
Australians aged in their 30s and 40s are experiencing unprecedented and in some cases world-leading rates of at least 10 different types of cancer โ and scientists are desperate to understand why.https://t.co/Ck07cTfocj pic.twitter.com/XVEduJPbbD
