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← Latest editionCancer diagnoses rose across seven cancer types among under-50s
A World Cancer Research Fund comparison of NHS data reports higher diagnosis rates in 2023 than in 2001 for seven cancers in people under 50 in England. The figures identify a trend to investigate, not its cause.
- The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) reports increases for prostate, bowel, kidney, womb, liver, pancreatic and breast cancers.
- Its comparison puts bowel cancer diagnoses at 1,289 in 2001 and 2,989 in 2023; breast cancer diagnoses among women rose from 6,886 to 8,507.
- The figures compare two years, not a continuous annual trend, and do not explain why diagnoses changed.
- NHS England’s data dashboard allows users to select age groups and years, but WCRF’s full analysis and detailed methods were not published.
WCRF says it compared NHS cancer-registration data for England in 2001 and 2023. Its reported rates per 100,000 rose from 3.9 to 8.4 for bowel cancer, and from 42.0 to 47.5 for breast cancer among women under 50. The charity also reported higher rates for the other five cancers. These are figures reported by WCRF through press coverage; they have not been independently recalculated here from the NHS tables.1
The NHS dashboard contains English cancer incidence data from 2001 to 2023. Users can select cancer group, gender, age group and year, and combine age groups to make custom bands. NHS England defines an incidence rate as new registrations divided by the population, multiplied by 100,000.2
That matters because the NHS’s 2023 age-group chapter uses bands such as 15–44 and 45–54, rather than a single under-50 category. WCRF’s detailed methods were not available to show precisely how it assembled its under-50 figures, defined each cancer group or calculated the rounded rates. The Science Media Centre said the charity supplied no full report or journal paper.3
The comparison is between two endpoint years, not evidence that diagnoses rose every year between them. Nor does it establish why the numbers changed. The figures count recorded diagnoses; they do not, on their own, separate changes in the underlying occurrence of cancer from changes in awareness, testing, access to care or recording.
Experts commenting through the Science Media Centre urged caution. Urologist Prabhakar Rajan said increased awareness and changes in testing or diagnosis could contribute to the prostate figures, while other factors might also play a role. Cochrane Collaboration researcher Rachel Richardson noted that the under-50 prostate total rose from 158 cases to 640, but remains small, and that some other cancers, including oesophageal cancer, saw fewer cases.4
A separate Cancer Research UK analysis found a 24% rise in overall cancer incidence rates among people aged 25–49 across the UK from 1995 to 2019. It covers a different period, geography and age band, so it is context rather than a replication of WCRF’s comparison.5