"They're younger, fitter and can often handle treatment intensity better, but some have this highly aggressive form of pancreatic cancer, which causes an accelerated decline in front of your eyes," she says. "To them and us it's often beyond comprehension, because who could imagine that a healthy 40 year old would develop this kind of malignancy?"

As well as recognising the trend, cancer specialists are feeling an increasing sense of urgency to try and get to the bottom of the factors driving it. The authors of the Lancet study commented that if this pattern continued, it could ultimately increase the burden of disease in future, halting and even reversing decades of public health progress in combating cancer.

So what is going on?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241004-the-puzzle-of-rising-early-onset-breast-and-colorectal-cancer-in-younger-people