Cancer Survivors Exhibit Increased Risk of Age-Related Disease
It is now well known that former cancer patients exhibit an increased risk of age-related disease, including further cancers unrelated to the first cancer. As researchers note here, this appears to have a socioeconomic dimension in addition to the purely biological aspects of the problem. Considering those, cancer in later life is associated with a faster pace of aging, and the underlying mechanisms of aging drive the risk of all age-related diseases. But to a large degree, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are harmful treatments that have lasting negative side-effects. Even modern immunotherapies, while much better for the patient, produce harmful, lasting disruptions to immune function in a subset of patients that will have unpleasant consequences in the years ahead. In the case of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the patient is left with a raised burden of senescent cells, producing signals that encourage chronic inflammation and disrupt tissue function. Researchers are investigating the use of senolytic drugs to prevent this outcome by clearing senescent cells; it is a promising line of work.
Since 1958, Sweden has registered all cancer patients in the National Cancer Register. Swedish researchers have now used this register to study all cancer survivors who had cancer as a child, adolescent, or adult to examine outcomes in later life. The study's data spans 63 years. From this data, approximately 65,000 cancer patients under the age of 25 were compared with a control group of 313,000 individuals (a ratio of 1:5), where age, sex and housing situation were matched with the patient group. From other registers, the researchers retrieved information on morbidity, mortality and demography.
The researchers found that the cancer survivors were about three times more likely to develop cancer later in life, 1.23 times more likely to have cardiovascular disease and had a 1.41 times higher risk of accidents, poisoning, and suicide. At present, the healthcare system usually follows up cancer survivors five years after the end of treatment. In other words, you are usually considered healthy if the cancer has not returned after five years, and no further follow-up is planned. But the current study, and also previous ones, show that this is probably not enough.
Link: https://liu.se/en/news-item/canceroverlevare-har-okad-risk-for-sjukdomar-livet-ut