Ageing, oxidative stress and cancer: paradigms in parallax

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Ageing is thought to be associated with increased oxidative stress and increased cancer risk. However, recent evidence that breast cancers arising in older women are not associated with oxidative stress questions the link between age and increasing oxidative stress. Does ageing cause or simply permit cancer development? Two paradigms central to geroscience research are that aging is associated with increased oxidative stress and increased cancer risk. Therefore, it could be deduced that cancers arising with ageing will show evidence of increased oxidative stress. Recent studies of gene expression in age-controlled breast cancer cases indicate that this deduction is false, posing parallax views of these two paradigms, and highlighting the unanswered question: does ageing cause or simply permit cancer development?