Democrats’ $20 million study of men produces laughably obvious results
'the Democratic Party doesn't really like or respect them'
Crazy 'cat lady' parasite decapitates sperm, 'colonizes' testes
Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite that can infect any nucleated cell in any warm-blooded animal and can cause a wide range of health complications — some fatal, such as miscarriage or inflammation of the brain. Over 40 million Americans are infected with the parasite, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it infects an estimated 30%-50% of the total world population.
This parasite is stereotypically associated with crazy "cat ladies" on account of the parasite's presence in cat feces — cats are its only known definitive hosts — and its association with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and suicidal behavior.
Researchers from Chile, Germany, and Uruguay confirmed in a new peer-reviewed study published in the FEBS Journal that the rapidly dividing asexual form of Toxoplasma gondii, generally known as tachyzoites, "colonize and proliferate" within testes and in the coiled sperm-storing tube behind each testicle.
RELATED: Lancet study: Fertility is plummeting globally, with over half of countries below replacement level
Besides its capacity to behead and deform sperm, the researchers indicated that the parasite's alterations to "mitochondrial activity can cause oxidative stress leading to male infertility."
Bill Sullivan, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Indiana University, recently noted that "testicular function and sperm production are sharply diminished in Toxoplasma-infected mice, rats, and rams. Infected mice have significantly lower sperm counts and a higher proportion of abnormally shaped sperm."
While the researchers indicated in the new study that the parasite's impact on sperm could be a factor contributing to the global declines in male fertility in recent decades, Sullivan suggested that "studies to date that show defects in the sperm of infected men are too small to draw firm conclusions at this time."
The CDC indicated that infections can occur as the result of eating contaminated under-cooked meat or shellfish or unwashed contaminated produce; contact with cat excrement; mother-to-child transmission; and receipt of an infected organ transplant or blood transfusion.
The agency recommended a number of precautions that might reduce the risk of infection, including wearing gloves when gardening or touching sand possibly contaminated with the parasite; ensuring food is cooked to a safe internal temperature; keeping meat frozen at sub-zero temperatures for several days before cooking; ensuring vegetables are properly rinsed before cooking and/or consumption; and, in the case of cat owners, changing litter boxes daily.
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Researchers advocate using existing aircraft, sulfur to block sunlight amid UK-backed trials
A study published Monday in the American Geophysical Union's peer-reviewed journal Earth's Future suggested, largely on the basis of different aerosol injection simulations, that it might be worthwhile using existing commercial jetliners to pollute the skies with toxic sulfur dioxide particles in order to dim the sun and thereby cool the planet.
Researchers from University College London indicated that weaponizing jets like the Boeing 777F — roughly 36 of which are produced a year — against the sun would would mean "lower technical barriers," a potential increase in "the number of actors able to produce a substantial global cooling using SAI [stratospheric aerosol injection]," and an earlier potential start date for this master plan.
They acknowledged, however, that the use of existing aircraft for the purposes of SAI would be less efficient than having specialized aircraft flying at altitudes of over 12 miles to conduct dumps and more likely to generate undesirable side effects.
'Dousing our citizens, our waterways and landscapes with toxins.'
According to the study, "Low-altitude SAI with high-latitude and seasonal injection, could achieve a substantial global cooling effect using existing large jetliners with a service ceiling of 13 km."
The researchers estimated "a global cooling of 0.6°C for an injection of 12 Tg at 13 km altitude at 60° North and South, in the local spring and summer." In other words, climate meddlers might be able to cool the planet down just over half a degree with a seasonal dumping of over 13.2 million tons of sulfur at the latitudes of Anchorage, Alaska, and the southern tip of South America.
In effect, they would be emulating the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, which injected 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere and caused a rapid half-degree drop in global temperatures. According to NASA, this drop lasted for two years until the sulfate dropped out of the atmosphere.
"We find this strategy would have only 35% of the forcing efficiency of a conventional high-altitude-subtropical injection, which would lead to a proportionate increase in the side-effects of SAI per unit cooling, such as human exposure to descending particulate matter," wrote the researchers.
In addition to "dousing our citizens, our waterways and landscapes with toxins," as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put it last month, the embrace of this strategy might increase the "risk of unilateral or poorly planned deployment," said the researchers.
Dozens of U.S. states have taken steps to ban geoengineering and weather modification activities. Earlier this month, the Florida Senate passed legislation that would protect the Sunshine State's skies from climate alarmists' shadowy designs. The United Kingdom has gone in the other direction.
Blaze News recently reported that the U.K. is throwing its approval and weight behind solar geoengineering experiments to be conducted by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency.
'That means that we would need to use three times the amount of aerosol to have the same effect on global temperature.'
Even with America's geoengineering bans, the homeland could potentially be impacted by foreign SAI experiments should the U.K. or another national entity decide to unilaterally execute SAI operations ahead of schedule, thanks to the embrace of modified jetliners.
A 2017 study published in Nature Communications indicated that SAI only in the northern hemisphere might increase droughts, hurricanes, and storms elsewhere, and concluded that "the impacts of SG would not be entirely confined to the perturbed region."
Lead author Alistair Duffey on the new study in Earth's Future told Phys.org, "Solar geoengineering comes with serious risks and much more research is needed to understand its impacts. However, our study suggests that it is easier to cool the planet with this particular intervention than we thought. This has implications for how quickly stratospheric aerosol injection could be started and by who."
"There are downsides to this polar low-altitude strategy," continued Duffey. "At this lower altitude, stratospheric aerosol injection is about one-third as effective. That means that we would need to use three times the amount of aerosol to have the same effect on global temperature, increasing side effects such as acid rain. The strategy would also be less effective at cooling the tropics, where the direct vulnerability to warming is highest."
Duffey added that "climate change is a serious problem," intimating that policymakers might weight the perceived threat of changing weather patterns as more concerning than the threats posed dumping chemicals overhead and generating acidic precipitation.
Columbia University's Climate School noted last April, "Studies show that stratospheric aerosol injection could weaken the stratospheric ozone layer, alter precipitation patterns, and affect agriculture, ecosystem services, marine life, and air quality. Moreover, the impacts and risks would vary by how and where it is deployed, the climate, ecosystems, and the population."
Matthew Henry of the University of Exeter, one of Duffey's co-authors, made clear to Phys.org that even with solar geoengineering, climate alarmists will still want to continue with their project of social engineering: "Stratospheric aerosol injection is certainly not a replacement for greenhouse gas emission reductions as any potential negative side effects increase with the amount of cooling: we can only achieve long-term climate stability with net zero."
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Damning study reveals what DEI does to people — and unsurprisingly, it's really bad
Few public and private institutions proved resistant in recent years to infection by the race-obsessive ideology underpinning the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement. The body politic appears, however, to be experiencing a belated immune response.
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard/UNC, for instance, helped pave the way for the dismantling of DEI on college and university campuses nationwide. Lawsuits and federal civil rights complaints targeting companies' DEI initiatives immediately followed. Likely keen to avoid similar legal challenges and facing pressure from normalcy advocates, multiple American organizations once captive to the race-obsessed program, including Ford, Harley-Davidson, Tractor Supply, Jack Daniel's, and Walmart, have abandoned DEI.
A study published Monday by the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University provided strong justification for why Americans should dismantle the remainder of the DEI regime sooner rather than later, noting that race-obsessed programming is divisive, counterproductive, and helps create authoritarians.
'Some DEI programs not only fail to achieve their goals but can actively undermine efforts.'
The study, titled "Instructing Animosity: How DEI Pedagogy Produces the Hostile Attribution Bias," noted at the outset that a Pew Research Center study found in 2023 that over half of American workers have DEI meetings or trainings at work.
While the re-education that the majority of American workers are compelled to undergo is supposedly intended to increase empathy in interpersonal interactions, cultivate inclusive environments, and maximize diversity on the basis of immutable characteristics and sexual preferences, the study indicated that there is evidence to suggest "that some DEI programs not only fail to achieve their goals but can actively undermine efforts."
"Specifically, mandatory trainings that focus on particular target groups can foster discomfort and perceptions of fairness," said the study. "DEI initiatives seen as affirmative action rather than business strategy can provoke backlash, increasing rather than reducing racial resentment. And diversity initiatives aimed at managing bias can fail, sometimes resulting in decreased representation and triggering negativity among employees."
The researchers collected various DEI education materials used across three groupings — race, religion, and caste — in "interventional and educational settings," excerpted rhetoric from the materials, then employed the excerpts in psychological surveys "measuring explicit bias, social distancing, demonization, and authoritarian tendencies." Participants in the study were also tasked with reviewing the materials or neutral control materials.
The results were damning.
The researchers found that across all three groupings, participants "engendered a hostile attribution bias, amplifying perceptions of prejudicial hostility where none was present, and punitive responses to the imaginary prejudice."
In one test, researchers split 423 Rutgers University students into two groups. One group read an apolitical control essay about American corn production while the other read an essay incorporating racist CRT propaganda from Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo.
After each group completed reading their assigned materials, participants were presented with a "racially neutral scenario" — where a student's application to an elite East Coast university was rejected following his interview by an admissions officer — and asked questions about their perceptions of racism in the interaction. The scenario did not mention the race of either the hypothetical student or the admissions officer.
'Exposure to anti-oppressive narratives can increase the endorsement of the type of demonization and scapegoating characteristic of authoritarianism.'
The group previously provided with propaganda from Kendi and DiAngelo reportedly "developed a hostile attribution bias ... perceiv[ing] the admissions officer as significantly more prejudiced than did those who read the neutral corn essay."
According to the researchers, "Participants exposed to the anti-racist rhetoric perceived more discrimination from the admissions officer (~21%), despite the complete absence of evidence of discrimination. They believed the admissions officer was more unfair to the applicant (~12%), had caused more harm to the applicant (~26%), and had committed more microaggressions (~35%)."
Simply put, Kendi and DiAngelo had students seeing racism and unfairness that wasn't there.
In the other groupings, participants provided DEI materials similarly turned out nastier than the control group.
For instance, in the caste study, Adolf Hitler quotes resonated with participants who were exposed to DEI materials when the word "Jew" was swapped out for "Brahmin."
"These findings suggest that exposure to anti-oppressive narratives can increase the endorsement of the type of demonization and scapegoating characteristic of authoritarianism," wrote the researchers.
"When DEI initiatives typically affirm the laudable goals of combating bias and promoting inclusivity, an emerging body of research warns that these interventions may foster authoritarian mindsets, particularly when anti-oppressive narratives exist within an ideological and vindictive monoculture," said the study. "The push toward absolute equity can undermine pluralism and engender a (potentially violent) aspiration of ideological purity."
The paper concluded, "The evidence presented in these studies reveals that while purporting to combat bias, some anti-oppressive DEI narratives can engender a hostile attribution bias and heighten racial suspicion, prejudicial attitudes, authoritarian policing, and support for punitive behaviors in the absence of evidence for a transgression deserving punishment."
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Scientists Sue Over ‘Discriminatory’ Retraction Of Studies Exposing Abortion Pill Dangers
The researchers have tried for months to obtain arbitration, but the lawsuit alleges Sage has stalled progress with extra-contractual demands.Baby's first junk food: How companies prey on new parents
Almost two-thirds of supermarket baby food is unhealthy while nearly all baby food labels contain misleading marketing claims designed to "trick" parents.
Those are the conclusions of an eyebrow-raising study in which researchers at Australia's George Institute for Global Health analyzed 651 foods marketed for children ages 6 months to 36 months at 10 supermarket chains in the United States.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nutrients on Wednesday, found that 60% of the foods failed to meet nutritional standards set by the World Health Organization.
'Our findings highlight the urgent need for better regulation and guidance in the infant and toddler foods market in the United States - the health of future generations depends on it.'
In addition, 70% of the baby food failed to meet protein requirements, 44% exceeded total sugar recommendations, 25% failed to meet calorie recommendations, and 20% exceeded recommended sodium limits set by the WHO.
The study said the most concerning products were snack foods and pouches.
"Research shows 50% of the sugar consumed from infant foods comes from pouches, and we found those were some of the worst offenders,” said Dr. Elizabeth Dunford, senior study author and an adjunct assistant professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Sales of such convenient baby food pouches soared 900% in the U.S.in the past 13 years, according to the study.
"These pouches are very worrisome. Children have to learn to chew, so they should be eating regular fruits, not pureed, sweetened things in a pouch. Often, these blends are not natural and much sweeter than real fruit, so the child’s being taught to only like super sweet things," said Dr. Mark Corkins, a University of Tennessee gastroenterologist and a chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition.
Corkins noted that children not exposed to a variety of textures of food can "develop a texture aversion and will refuse anything but smooth, pureed types of foods."
According to the study, "Snack and finger foods, such as fruit bars, cereal bars, and puffed snacks, made up nearly 20% of products available for purchase in 2023, yet had some of the lowest compliance rates across the WHO's nutrition and promotional criteria. These foods contained low levels of protein and high levels of energy, sodium, and sugar and frequently contained added free sugars and sweeteners."
Dunford noted that consumption of processed foods in early childhood can set lifelong habits of poor eating that could lead to obesity, diabetes, and some cancers.
She continued, "Time-poor parents are increasingly choosing convenience foods, unaware that many of these products lack key nutrients needed for their child’s development and tricked into believing they are healthier than they really are."
The study also found that 99.4% of the baby food analyzed had misleading marketing claims on the labels that violated the WHO's promotional guidelines. On average, products contained four misleading marketing claims; some had as many as eleven.
The authors of the study wrote, "Common claims included ‘non genetically modified (GM)’ (70 percent), ‘organic’ (59 percent), ‘no BPA’ (37 percent), and ‘no artificial colors/flavors’ (25 percent)."
Dunford said these types of marketing advertisements can lead consumers to believe the product is more nutritious than it actually is.
Dr. Daisy Coyle — a research fellow at the George Institute and one of the authors of the study — said these marketing claims create a "health halo" around these products.
"The lack of regulation in this area leaves the door wide open for the food industry to deceive busy parents," Coyle explained. "We saw this not only in the use of misleading claims but also in the use of misleading names, where the product name did not reflect the main ingredients found on the ingredient list."
Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past three decades. There are nearly 15 million U.S. youths aged 2-19 years who have obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dunford declared, "Our findings highlight the urgent need for better regulation and guidance in the infant and toddler foods market in the United States – the health of future generations depends on it."
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Waning biblical worldview in US coincides with dramatic rejection of morality: Report
The Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University conducts an annual national survey measuring the incidence of both biblical and competing worldviews, including satanism, Wicca, Marxism, moralistic therapeutic deism, nihilism, and secular humanism.
In their latest "American Worldview Inventory" report, Dr. George Barna and his team noted a precipitous decline in the incidence of adults holding a biblical worldview in each of the last five generations. Although that might warrant celebration among secularists and others hostile to Christianity, the decline appears to coincide with a growing embrace of immorality.
"The United States is witnessing the destruction of biblical morality," said Barna. "Whatever people may feel about that reality, we must recognize that an inescapable outcome of the rejection of our traditional moral base is the weakening of personal relationships
According to the report, the majority of respondents indicated that they regarded "lying, abortion, consensual intercourse between unmarried adults, gay marriage, and the rejection of absolute moral truth as morally acceptable."
Fewer than than half of respondents indicated that the Bible amounted to their primary guide to morality, and a significant cohort, 29%, indicated that behavior is permissible so long as it is not harmful.
When it comes to abortion, support grew with each successive age cohort. Whereas 60% of Boomers said the execution of the unborn was acceptable behavior, 67% of Millennials and 69% of Gen Zers endorsed the practice.
60% of Boomers said sex between unmarried adults was morally acceptable; the younger generations were far more lenient — 63% of Gen Xers, 69% of Millennials, and 73% of Gen Zers saw no wrong in such uncommitted encounters.
There were, however, two cases in which Gen Zers bucked demoralizing trends. Gen Zers were found to be less likely than members of previous generations to believe that human beings are basically good and to endorse homosexuals getting "married."
Among Christian respondents, Barna and his team found that those who attend Protestant churches were more likely than those attending Catholic churches to possess biblical moral perspectives for three-quarters of the moral choices identified in the survey. Even in the Protestant cohort, there was a perceived split between evangelicals and mainline Protestants — the former far more likely to take a Bible-based view on most moral issues.
Judging from the report's "morality indicators," 62% of adults attending evangelical churches, 42% of Catholics, 46% of mainline Protestants, 35% of people aligned with non-Christian faiths, and 27% of non-believers signaled that they live in harmony with biblical teaching, respectively.
"Biblical worldview incidence has declined with each of the last five generations," said Barna. "During that time, the national incidence of adults holding a biblical worldview has plummeted from 12% to today’s 4% level."
Barna's assessment and figures rely upon an admittedly puristic conformance with his particular criteria. Self-identified Christians who attend church, follow Christ, and attempt to lead moral lives may find themselves in the "syncretist" camp along with 92% of other Americans for having allegedly assimilated philosophies or practices deemed by the CRC to be alien to a biblical world.
"Our studies of teenagers and preteens indicate that the national incidence will drop another two points within the next 15 years, unless some dramatic and unusually effective spiritual renewal event occurs," continued the sociologist. "The expected decline can be explained by the increasing influence of the worldview championed by Millennials and Gen Z as the proportion of adults from the Boomer and Elders generations substantially decreases."
Barna suggested that the multi-generational moral slide helps to partly explain why "Americans no longer trust their central institutions or relationships. Lying, stealing, and cheating have become the new moral norm for a majority of our citizens. We have steadily moved back to the jungle mentality of 'every man for himself.'"
With the understanding that a lasting worldview is more or less formed by the time an individual enters the teenage years, Barna told "Washington Watch with Tony Perkins" that the way to arrest the moral slide is for parents to take action early on.
'Make them a disciple.'
"Our research has consistently shown is that children are not being pointed in the direction of developing a biblical worldview," said the sociologist. "In other words, a decision-making filter that's based on biblical truth. Instead, what they're doing is they're adopting the ways of the world. And part of the reason for that is because their parents love them, and they want them to succeed in life, but toward that end, they're not necessarily setting them up to develop a biblical worldview."
The reluctance or failure on the part of religious communities and parents to furnish children with a biblical worldview does not make for open-minded children, suggested Barna. Rather it leaves them at the mercy of the ideologies and intellectual fads of the day.
"The only people that make disciples are disciples. So number one, as a parent, you've got to be a disciple if you want your child or children to be followers of Jesus. And then secondly, recognize that biblically, it's your dominant responsibility in life. This may be the most important thing you ever do in your life is to raise your child to be an ardent follower of Jesus Christ," said Barna. "Make them a disciple."
"Spend more time on this than you do on sports, than you do on shopping, than you do on hobbies, than you do on watching movies and TV together. It’s the most important thing that you’re ever going to do. Do it well," he added.
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Study finds microplastics in every single human and canine testicle: 'The plastic makes a difference'
A peer-reviewed study published last week in the official journal of the Society of Toxicology indicated that human and canine testicles are teeming with microplastics. This may help account for the precipitous global decline in male fertility.
Awash in microplastics
Nature Medicine noted in an editorial last month that the "world is awash" with over 6 billion tons of plastic.
'MNPs are found everywhere on the planet, including the oceans, air, and food supply.'
Roughly 353 million tons of plastic waste were produced in 2019 alone. Nature Medicine indicated that's particularly bad news since plastics contain over 10,000 chemicals, including endocrine disruptors and cancer-causing carcinogens, and can easily steal into the human body.
Plastics find their way into the human body in the form of tiny particles called microplastics (less than 5 mm in diameter) and nanoplastics (less than 1 μm in diameter). Microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) can arise from a variety of sources, including by design, as in the case of microbeads used in cosmetic and personal care products, or inadvertently, as the result of degradation of larger plastic products, such as through the laundering of synthetic clothes or abrasion of tires. MNPs are found everywhere on the planet, including the oceans, air and food supply.
Blaze News previously detailed the findings of an Australian June 2023 study that suggested humans might be inhaling roughly 16.2 bits of plastic every hour — enough to make a credit card per week. These credit cards can prove costly.
According to the scientific journal, microplastics have been shown in rodent studies to adversely impact various organs, including the intestine, lungs, and liver along with the reproductive and nervous systems.
In terms of their impact on human beings — where they have been found polluting various organs along with placenta and breast milk — researchers have identified links between microplastics and various health conditions, including cardiovascular disease and inflammatory bowel disease.
It appears scientists may have come across yet another troubling link.
Devaluing the family jewels
Blaze News previously reported that sperm counts have been trending downward in men on every continent since at least 1973.
A 2022 peer-reviewed study published in the journal Human Reproduction Update confirmed a trend detailed by the same researchers years earlier in a groundbreaking meta-analysis. The researchers indicated that "this world-wide decline is continuing in the 21st century at an accelerated pace."
The study, led by Dr. Hagai Levine of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dr. Shanna Swan of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, revealed that the trend was "driven by a 50%-60% decline among men" in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
After combining the findings from over 250 other studies and increasing their sample size — so as to include men not already worried about their fertility — the researchers determined that between 1973 and 2018, sperm counts "declined appreciably," not just in Western men but in 53 countries across the world.
The sperm count decline has "become steeper since 2000," dropping by 1.4% per year and by 62.3% overall.
Declining sperm counts have been attributed to various factors, including chlormequat chloride, an agricultural chemical found in oat-based foods; mobile phone radiation exposure; and certain vaccines.
Microplastics are evidently another contender.
Plastic baggage
Researchers at the University of New Mexico recently studied 47 canine and 23 human testes. Every single testicle contained microplastics, polyethylene — used to make plastic bags and bottles — being the most prevalent.
'When I first received the results for dogs I was surprised. I was even more surprised when I received the results for humans.'
According to the University of New Mexico, the researchers chemically treated the testicle samples to dissolve the fat and proteins. They then spun each sample in an "ultracentrifuge, leaving a nugget of plastic at the bottom of a tube. Then, heated the plastic pellet in a metal cup to 600 degrees Celsius. They used a mass spectrometer to analyze gas emissions as different types of plastic burned at specific temperatures."
They found that the average concentration of microplastics in testicular tissue were 122.63 micrograms per gram in dogs and 328.44 micrograms per gram in humans.
"At the beginning, I doubted whether microplastics could penetrate the reproductive system," said Dr. Xiaozhong Yu, head of the research team. "When I first received the results for dogs I was surprised. I was even more surprised when I received the results for humans."
Matthew Campen, one of the authors of the study, told NPR the tiny particles are "shard-like, stabby bits."
The human testicles, which the Guardian reported were taken from the corpses of men between the ages of 16 and 88, had been chemically preserved such that their sperm count could not be measured. Researchers were, however, able to assess whether higher plastic contamination in the dog's testes corresponded with lower sperm counts.
Researcers found that high levels of PVC — the second-most prevalent polymer in dogs — correlated with a lower sperm count.
"The plastic makes a difference — what type of plastic might be correlated with potential function," said Yu. "PVC can release a lot of chemicals that interfere with spermatogenesis, and it contains chemicals that cause endocrine disruption."
The research team examined canine testicles in particular because "compared to rats and other animals, dogs are cloer to humans," said Yu. "We believe dogs and humans share common environmental factors that contribute to their decline.
"We don't want to scare people," continued Yu. "We want to scientifically provide the data and make people aware there are a lot of microplastics. We can make our own choices to better avoid exposures, change our lifestyle and change our behavior."
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Researchers blame explosion of of cancer cases among younger people on 'accelerated aging'
Americans are increasingly suffering cancer at younger ages.
The journal Nature noted last month that the number of early-onset cancer cases will increase by roughly 30% between 2019 and 2030. Additionally, colorectal cancer, which historically has affected geriatric men, is now the leading cause of cancer death among men under 50 and is now the second-leading cause of cancer death among young women. Uterine cancer has increase by 2% every year for the past three decades. Early-onset breast cancer has reportedly jumped by nearly 4% annually between 2016 and 2019.
"If it had been a single smoking gun, our studies would have at least pointed to one factor," said Sonia Kupfer, a gastroenterologist at the University of Chicago. "But it doesn't seem to be that — it seems to be a combination of many different factors."
Various possible factors have been considered, including rising rates of obesity; dietary changes and corresponding alterations to gut bacteria; sleep deprivation; increased alcohol consumption; and vaccines.
A study presented over the weekend at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting in San Diego suggested that the incredible spike in cancer among younger adults in the U.S. may be the result of "accelerated aging."
"We all know cancer is anaging disease. However, it is really coming to a younger population. So whether we can use the well-developed concept of biological aging to apply that to the younger generation is a really untouched area," Dr. Yin Cao, an associate professor of surgery at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and senior author of the research, told CNN.
Chronological age refers to the period of time an individual has been alive. Biological age, also known as physiological age, refers to the condition of a person's body and the state of his genetic material. A chronologically younger person who vapes, eats too much, doesn't get enough sleep, and/or is genetically predisposed to various diseases could, accordingly, find himself biologically older than someone who has seen many more sunsets.
While cancer has long disproportionately affected chronologically older people, Cao and his fellow researchers have come to suspect that the spike in cases of early-onset solid tumors among younger Americans may be the result of increased biological age, characterized by "accelerated aging."
"Multiple cancer types are becoming increasingly common among younger adults in the United States and globally," Ruiyi Tian, a researcher from WUSM on Cao's team, told the American Association for Cancer Research, referencing increased incidents of cancer in adults under the age of 55. "Understanding the factors driving this increase will be key to improve the prevention or early detection of cancers in younger and future generations."
"Accumulating evidence suggests that the younger generations may be aging more swiftly than anticipated, likely due to earlier exposure to various risk factors and environmental insults," continued Tian. "However, the impact of accelerated aging on early-onset cancer development remains unclear."
Tian and her colleagues examined data from nearly 150,000 people in the U.K. Biobank database and calculated each individual's biological age using nine biomarkers found in the blood: albumin, alkaline phosphatase, creatinine, C-reactive protein, glucose, mean corpuscular volume, red cell distribution width, white blood cell count, and lymphocyte proportion.
According to the Cleveland Clinic:
- Albumin is a protein in blood plasma. Low levels may indicate kidney disease, liver disease, inflammation, or infection. High levels may indicate dehydration or sever diarrhea.
- Alkaline phosphatase is an enzyme found throughout the human body. High levels of the enzyme indicate liver disease or possible bone disorders.
- Creatinine is a natural chemical the body uses to energize muscles. High creatinine levels usually signify kidney damage.
- C-reactive protein is released by the liver into the bloodstream in response to inflammation. Elevated levels suggest serious infections or inflammatory conditions.
- Glucose or sugar is carried by the blood to all of the body's cells for energy. Elevated levels of glucose tend to indicate diabetes.
- Mean corpuscular volume references the average size of a patient's red blood cells. Low MCV could be a sign of iron-deficiency anemia and other blood disorders. Alternatively, high MCV could mean a vitamin B12 deficiency, folate deficiency, liver disease, or bone marrow dysfunction.
- Red cell distribution width is measured because inconsistency or high variation could be a signal of anemia.
- White blood cells counts are executed to detect hidden infections, immune deficiencies, autoimmune disease, and other disorders. High and low counts alike indicate possibly serious problems.
The researchers, whose study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, identified individuals whose biological age — as indicated by these biomarkers — was higher than their chronological age as having accelerated aging.
According to Tian and her colleagues, individuals born in or after 1965 had a 17% higher likelihood of accelerated aging than those born born between 1950 and 1954. They further found that "each standard deviation increase in accelerated aging was associated with a 42% increased risk of early-onset lung cancer, a 22% increased risk of early-onset gastrointestinal cancer, a 36% increase risk of early-onset uterine cancer."
Tian speculated that certain cancer types had stronger associations with accelerated aging because of the natures of the affected tissues. The lungs, for instance, have a limited ability to regenerate, making them more vulnerable to biological aging.
"If validated, our findings suggest that interventions to slow biological aging could be a new avenue for cancer prevention, and screening efforts tailored to younger individuals with signs of accelerated aging could help detect cancers early," said Tian.
The American Cancer Society revealed in its latest annual report on cancer facts and trends that over 2 million new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed this year. In the previous three years, the estimate was 1.9 million.
Yale Medicine noted that younger adults are ostensibly the only age group with an increase in overall cancer incidence between 1995 and 2020.
This year, there are altogether expected to be 611,720 deaths from cancer in the United States.
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