Pancreatic cancer cases in young adults have soared in recent years but, to the confusion of scientists, deaths from the disease haven’t spiked.
Now a team of experts from the US may have uncovered a possible reason why.
Pancreatic cancer is considered one of the deadliest forms of the disease.
Less than one in 20 pancreatic cancer patients live to see the decade after their diagnosis, according to UK figures.
Experts have therefore expected to see a significant rise in pancreatic deaths in the under 50s — to match the 2 to 8 per cent jump in diagnoses over the last 18 years.
Now, experts believe this hasn’t happened because of the specific type of pancreatic cancer affecting young people, which is easier to spot and treat at earlier stages.
Pancreatic cancer is an umbrella term for various tumours found on the 25cm tadpole shaped organ that helps with both digestion and hormones regulation.
One type, adenocarcinoma, is the most common, accounting for 90 per cent of cases.
Becki Buggs was 43 when she received a devastating pancreatic diagnosis with nurse motivated to get tests after her husband commented she looked like ‘a Minion’, which was later revealed to be jaundice. Here Becki is pictured with her two children Jacob and Georgie who were 9 and eight-years-old at the time respectively
This variant has little-to-no symptoms until patients start suddenly losing weight and turn yellow and at which point for the vast majority, it is too late.
It’s the reason why the disease has been dubbed a ‘silent killer’.
But experts, led by medics from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, found upon analysing the data there was no surge of adenocarcinoma in young people.
Instead, the surge came from another type of pancreatic cancer, called endocrine cancers.
In contrast to adenocarcinoma these are slow growing tumours that take decades to emerge, and while they may turn cancerous, are mostly benign.
Furthermore, authors suspect that the cancer isn’t actually appearing more often in young people, medics just have far better tools to spot it.
They believe that the increased use of high-tech medical scans like CT and MRIs — which have grown more sensitive over the years — are increasingly picking up endocrine cancers.
Now 45, Becki knows she is one of the lucky few whose pancreatic cancer was caught early enough to be operable. She is also part of a rising trend of younger women getting diagnosed with the disease, a pattern that experts are baffled by
These discoveries are often accidental, with the scan not directed at the pancreas itself but spotted by medics as they analyse images while investigating another medical problem.
Dr Gilbert Welch, a researcher in surgery and public Health at Brigham and author of on the study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, told The New York Times: ‘The more you are imaged, the more these things will turn up.’
Despite guidelines that state small endocrine tumours should be monitored with scans rather than removed with risky surgery, some medics argue it’s better to remove them in younger patients.
They say that as younger patients have a longer lifespan, there’s more time for these cancers to eventually turn deadly.
As Dr Adewole Adamson, an expert on overdiagnosis at the University of Texas and fellow author of the new study, explained these requests for action are often be driven by patients themselves.
‘A lot of patients say, “Get it out,”,’ he said.
‘When someone tells you that you have cancer you feel like you have to do something.’
But medics say the success for these type of interventions for endocrine cancers haven’t been assessed.
Pancreatic cancer has been dubbed a ‘silent killer’ due to its subtle signs that are often only spotted too late
Some are calling for endocrine cancer and the far more dangerous adenocarcinoma to be split so the former is no longer classified as a pancreatic cancer to help present data more accurately.
One Brit who has been hit by the devastation of a pancreatic cancer diagnosis can is Becki Buggs, 46, from Colchester, Essex.
The first indicator she had the disease was an off-hand comment from her husband who told her she looked like a ‘Minion’ — the yellow-shaded cartoon characters from Despicable Me film series.
Looking in the mirror, the experienced nurse noticed signs of jaundice, a yellowing of the skin and eyes and a serious indicator something is terribly wrong with the body’s internal processes.
The mother of two had been feeling unwell on Christmas Day 2021, three days before the jaundice began, but suspected this was probably a Covid infection.
Rushing herself to hospital for tests, she recalled strongly suspected it wasn’t going to be good news.
‘Everything was adding up to the fact that it was not going to be a good diagnosis. It didn’t make it any easier,’ she told MailOnline.
Three days later she was given the devastating news that her fears were well-founded — she had pancreatic cancer.
Pancreatic cancer remains one of the least survivable forms of the disease and worryingly its on the rise. Source for data: Cancer Research UK
Fortunately for her, she was one of the lucky few where the cancer was caught in the early stages meaning it could be operated on.
She had a pancreaticoduodenectomy, also known as a Whipple procedure, a gruelling op that sees cancerous tissue cut away and surgeons then rearrange the patient’s digestive system.
Becki had ironically prepared pancreatic patients for this procedure multiple times in her nursing career and described her own experience as the ‘hardest’ ordeal of her life.
‘They were the hardest 11 days of my life,’ she said.
‘It is a horrible operation. There’s no two ways about it. It’s totally re-plumbing your whole digestive system, so it is gruelling but for me, it wasn’t that bad because I knew what to expect.’
Becki, alongside cancer experts, has urged people experiencing any of the subtle signs of pancreatic cancer to seek advice from their GP.
‘I’m worried for other pancreatic cancer patients,’ she said.
‘It scares me that there are people out there that will think, oh, I just feel a bit off but it’s fine, I won’t get a GP appointment, I’ll just ride it out.
‘Then they become so ill and jaundiced that they get admitted to A&E and by then it’s too late.
‘If you are concerned about a symptom, get in touch with your GP.’
Pancreatic cancer kills about 10,000 Brits every year, roughly equivalent to one death every hour in the UK.
Symptoms of pancreatic cancer include jaundice, where the whites of the eyes and skin turn yellow, alongside itchy skin and darker urine.
Other possible signs include loss of appetite, unintended weight loss, constipation or bloating.
While symptoms are unlikely to be cancer it is important that they are checked out by a GP early just in case, especially if individuals have had them for over four weeks.
