Health
New study to investigate diet, lifestyle and the rise of bowel cancer in under-50s – Cancer Research UK
Humans have changed a lot recently.
We eat differently, work differently and play differently than the people who were here just a couple of generations before us, in environments they might struggle to recognise. And while we tend to live longer, we also face different health risks.
Over the past few years, scientists have uncovered a concerning rise in the number of people developing bowel cancer before they turn 50. It’s a pressing problem, but with so much changing so quickly, working out what’s behind it is a huge challenge.
Now, researchers are calling on the UK public to help find the answers. The PROSPECT-UK study, which Cancer Research UK is funding through Cancer Grand Challenges, aims to recruit 250,000 people aged 18 to 50 to share information that could show how diet, lifestyle and environment might contribute to bowel cancer risk in younger people.
It takes a trial this big to start picking out the patterns and trends that matter. Thankfully, early-onset bowel cancer is still relatively rare, so researchers need to study very large groups of people to spot the crucial details.
“Over just a few generations, our lifestyles, diets and environments have changed dramatically,” says Professor Sarah Berry, PROSPECT-UK’s lead researcher, from King’s College London. “But we don’t know which of these changes are increasing people’s risk of bowel cancer or which ones could help reduce it. We urgently need large-scale, long-term data to uncover the true causes.”
That data will play a key role in
Early-onset bowel cancer and PROSPECT-UK
Bowel cancer has long been considered a disease of older adults, and more than 9 in 10 cases still happen in people over 50.
However, recent studies have shown that bowel cancer incidence rates in younger people are rising around the world, even as they stabilise or fall in older age groups.
In 2024, other researchers from PROSPECT found increasing rates of early-onset bowel cancer in 27 of the 50 countries they looked at. England saw the fourth-fastest rise of any of those countries between 2007 and 2017, faster than any other country in Europe.
Cancer Research UK’s stats tell a similar story: UK-wide, bowel cancer incidence rates in 25 to 49-year-olds have increased by more than 50% since the early 1990s.
PROSPECT-UK is an important step toward understanding what’s behind these increases. It’s an observational study, so it can’t directly prove causes on its own, but people who take part will provide crucial information to help researchers identify some of the likeliest culprits and guide the next phases of research.
It’s important to note that factors PROSPECT-UK isn’t looking at, like genetics and biology, may also be playing a part in the rise. The wider PROSPECT team will keep studying a range of potential contributors and investigating how they might combine to shape someone’s overall risk of early-onset bowel cancer.
