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• Posted January 12, 2026

Childhood Cancer Survivors Age More Rapidly, Genetics Show

More kids than ever are surviving cancer, but a new study shows how their childhood brush with the disease continues to haunt their health into adulthood.

Teenage and young adults who survived childhood cancer appear to age faster than people their age who never had cancer, researchers reported in the journal Nature Communications.

This accelerated aging affects them on a cellular level, increasing their risk of future diseases, researchers found.

It also impacts their brain function, potentially making them more likely to suffer from early-onset dementia, researchers said.

But the study also suggests that these cancer survivors can fight their accelerated aging by making healthy lifestyle choices: Quitting smoking, exercising and eating healthy foods.

“Young cancer survivors have many more decades of life to live,” said lead researcher AnnaLynn Williams, an assistant professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center in upstate New York.

“So, if these accelerated aging changes are occurring early on and setting them on a different trajectory, the goal is to intervene to not only increase their lifespan but improve their quality of life,” Williams said in a news release.

More than 500,000 survivors of childhood cancer live in the U.S., researchers said in background notes. An estimated 40% will experience persistent problems with cognitive function years following treatment.

Many are trying to get their lives started — finishing school, building careers, establishing independence, starting families — but problems with brain health can make this challenging, Williams said.

“It’s kind of like a perfect storm,” Williams said. “This is why we see many survivors having worse educational and employment outcomes than their siblings.”

For the new study, researchers evaluated more than 1,400 survivors of childhood cancer, most of whom had either acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or Hodgkin lymphoma.

All were at least five years past treatment, and some had been cancer survivors for decades, researchers said.

Genetic testing showed that childhood cancer survivors aged faster biologically, regardless of the treatment they received as children.

However, chemotherapy speeds up aging fastest, researchers found, likely through the way it changes DNA structures and does widespread damage to tissues and cells.

The team also found that faster cellular aging is linked to brain function. Survivors with advanced biological ages — who were much older than their calendar age — struggled the most with memory and attention.

Researchers next plan to investigate ways to protect cancer patients from this accelerated aging, and to determine the ideal time to intervene.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more on the long-term effects of childhood cancer treatment.

SOURCES: University of Rochester Medical Center, news release, Jan. 7, 2026; Nature Communications, Nov. 27, 2025