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Cancer Survivors Often Face Another Hurdle: Faster Aging - Dennis Thompson

  • NBC 2 News
  • (December 20, 2017)

Cancer Survivors Often Face Another Hurdle: Faster Aging - Dennis Thompson
Treatments that help people beat cancer also can cause them to age prematurely and die sooner, Mayo Clinic researchers report. Cancer survivors naturally age faster than others who haven't had cancer, and are more likely to develop long-term health problems related to aging while they're still relatively young, the study authors said. Currently, there are about 30 million cancer survivors worldwide, but researchers predict that about 19 million new cancer diagnoses will be made every year by 2025. Many of those people will survive their cancer, only to face long-term health consequences. According to Charles Shapiro, MD, director of cancer survivorship and translational breast cancer research at the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, "We're now struggling with our own success. This only comes up as a product of how well we're doing in terms of cancer mortality and increasing the population of survivors. Now we have to deal with the consequences. Sure, you're alive and that's great, but there are consequences." Harsh chemotherapy and radiation therapy kill off cancer cells, but they also damage normal healthy tissues, which diminishes the body's natural resilience.

- Charles Shapiro, MD, Director, Cancer Survivorship, Translational Breast Cancer Research, The Tisch Cancer Institute, Professor, Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

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