People below the age of 50 are getting cancer more than ever before — and doctors are stumped as to why.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, the shocking 2020 death of beloved actor Chadwick Boseman, who died of colorectal cancer at only 43 years old, seemed to wake the public up to the growing trend that researchers had been warning about for a decade prior.

“Colorectal cancer was the canary in the coal mine,” mused cancer epidemiologist Timothy Rebbeck of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Soon after, there was seemingly an explosion of all different types of cancers, many of which deal with or are near the gastrointestinal tract: appendix, pancreatic, stomach, and uterine.

CTWAS is a novel tool designed to spot genes that make us sick.

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This novel tool applies advanced statistics to study complex data from the human genome and pinpoints the genes that cause illnesses.

The findings revealed that out of six children subjected to the gene therapy, five exhibited restored hearing and enhanced speech recognition.

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Furthermore, the remaining incidents were ephemeral and had no lasting impact, showing that the detected adverse effects were just short and did not raise long-term issues.

“We are the first to initiate the clinical trial of OTOF gene therapy. It is thrilling that our team translated the work from basic research in animal model of DFNB9 to hearing restoration in children with DFNB9,” said Yilai Shu, lead study author from the Eye & ENT Hospital of Fudan University, in a press release.

In another notable event, an 11-year-old boy has become the first to undergo gene therapy in the United States to address congenital deafness.