Question: Does blood cancer get worse as you get older

Sophie Robinson answered on 12 Mar 2015:

There are many different types of blood cancer that affect people of different ages. The occurrence of most blood cancers increases with age but some like acute lymphoblastic leukaemia affect mostly children. Others such as multiple myeloma very rarely affect people who aren’t elderly.

As with most cancers however, incidence increases with age. This is because the tissues of older people have undergone many more cell divisions than younger people. Cancer arises when mistakes happen copying the DNA during cell division. Therefore the more cell division a person has undergone, the higher their chance of developing cancer.