Breast Cancer Treatments May Accelerate Biological Aging: Study

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Breast cancer treatment might be speeding up the aging clock. And radiation therapy may be the culprit, according to a new study from researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Understanding this connection is vital, as it sheds light on potential implications for patients’ long-term health and treatment decisions. 

How Cancer Therapies May Speed Up Biological Aging

Chronological age is simply how long one has been alive, while biological age is one’s physiological age. Biological age explains how two 50-year-old men can have dramatically different health; some people age more slowly. Cellular damage—caused by lifestyle, poor nutrition, diseases, and treatments—accelerates biological aging.

Researchers analyzed blood samples from 417 women—with samples collected twice, about eight years apart—in order to measure biological age. Roughly 50 percent of the participants developed breast cancer during that period.

The NIH scientists examined DNA methylation changes, which are chemical modifications to the DNA, in order to determine the risk for age-related diseases.

Cancer diagnosis has been associated with accelerated aging in older survivors. The new study examined how specific treatment regimens—including surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and endocrine therapy—influenced biological aging.

The results suggest that cancer therapy treatments speed up aging more than surgery does, as methylation changes weren’t observed in cancer survivors who had undergone a surgical procedure.

For participants with breast cancer, aging rates differed depending on treatment type. However, faster biological aging was most pronounced in those who received radiation therapy.

“The increases can be detected years after treatment,” Dr. Jack Taylor, a scientist emeritus at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the study’s senior author, said in a statement.

Additional research indicates that accelerated biological aging from cancer treatments may have lifelong health effects.

2022 study found that age increases cancer risk and that treatments such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, surgery, and radiation accelerate biological aging. It also found that by age 45, childhood cancer survivors faced twice the disease burden of people without cancer, indicating that the stresses of other treatments may have similar effects.
“Women faced with a breast cancer diagnosis should discuss all possible treatment options with their doctors to determine the best course of treatment for them,” Katie O’Brien, an NIEHS Epidemiology Branch scientist and a co-author of the NIH paper, said in a statement.

Radiation’s Effectiveness Still Outweighs Aging Link: Expert

The NIH researchers said the findings don’t mean that women with breast cancer should dismiss radiation therapy as an option. Radiation remains highly effective in preventing recurrence and spreading, according to experts.

Radiation and chemotherapy are important cancer treatments despite their association with increased biological aging, Dr. Theodore Strange, a primary care physician and the chair of medicine at Staten Island University Hospital, told The Epoch Times.

“If not for the treatments, one may not be able to get to be as chronologically older as possible as the cancer would cause ... premature death,” he said.

The risks always have to be weighed against the benefits in all treatment plans offered to patients, Dr. Strange said, noting that emerging targeted therapies may limit side effects such as accelerated aging.

Targeted cancer drugs—which are designed to precisely home in on specific proteins that enable the growth and spread of tumors—may not have the same age-accelerating effects.
George Citroner
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George Citroner reports on health and medicine, covering topics that include cancer, infectious diseases, and neurodegenerative conditions. He was awarded the Media Orthopaedic Reporting Excellence (MORE) award in 2020 for a story on osteoporosis risk in men.
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