Rise early 1 year, cancer risk increased by at least 6%

At puberty for 1 year early, children will be at risk of some 6% higher cancers than their normal peers.

Scientists at Cambridge University have identified new genetic evidence linking early onset of adolescence with some sex hormone-sensitive cancers.

They found that puberty earlier than usual, the risk of developing breast cancer increased by 6%. Meanwhile, the risk increased to 28% for endometrial cancer, 8% for ovarian cancer and 9% for prostate cancer.

That means a girl who starts puberty when she is 10 years old will have a 12% higher risk of breast cancer than a girl starting puberty at age 12.

The average age of puberty is 11 in girls and 12 in boys but the time varies according to individuals - (Photo: SVETIKD.)

Previous research has shown that puberty is related to the risk of developmental disease in the human life many decades later. But then, there is still not enough clear evidence whether the result is biased by the impact of other factors that also affect the disease like body weight.

The new study, published in Nature Genetics, found an important connection between them, even after taking into account the foreign factors. For the first time in scientific history, researchers have shown that starting puberty increases the risk of developing cancer.

The University of Cambridge research team said that a deeper understanding of the role of puberty in disease will help prevent unnecessary deaths.

Dr John Perry, head of the research team, said: "Our current study has identified a direct causal relationship between early puberty and increased risk of cancer. It can be explained by the higher level of sex hormones throughout life, but we need to do more to understand the exact mechanism . "

Puberty is 1 year early, increasing the risk of cancer by at least 6% - (Photo: RUI VIEIRA.)

The average age of puberty is 11 in girls and 12 in boys. However, time varies widely between individuals and tends to be among the family members.

The research team believes that 389 new genetic signals they identified explain about a quarter of genetic factors that affect puberty. They analyzed the entire genome of nearly 370,000 people from dozens of previous studies.

Discover the role of the "imprinted" gene, which only works in the body when inherited from a person - a parent. Variations of two of these genes were found to reduce puberty when they were inherited from the father, but had no effect if inherited from the mother.

Researcher Dr. Ken Ong said: "This is very interesting because it suggests that mothers and fathers have different effects in puberty early or later in their children."