One in two people in Britain will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, a U.K. charity has forecast.Cancer Research UK said in its latest analysis of the spread of the disease, published in the British Journal of Cancer on Wednesday, that new research methods show that more Britons are at risk of cancer than the organization had previously thought.The charity forecast nearly 48 percent of women and nearly 54 percent of men will develop cancer at some point in their lives - higher figures than the research charity's previous estimate of one-in-three people."Cancer is primarily a disease of old age, with more than 60 per cent of all cases diagnosed in people aged over 65," said the author of the research paper, Queen Mary University of London Professor Peter Sasieni, "If people live long enough then most will get cancer at some point.""But there's a lot we can do to make it less likely – like giving up smoking, being more active, drinking less alcohol and maintaining a healthy weight." Breast cancer is likely to remain the most common cancer among women and prostate cancer the most common cancer among men, it stated.The number of women being diagnosed with lung cancer continues to rise, according to the analysis.The charity said "age is the biggest risk factor for most cancers", noting that the longer people survive in life, the more chance they have of being diagnosed with cancer.Previous calculations that indicated cancer will affect just over one in three people were underestimating the scale of the disease, according to a new analysis by Cancer Research UK.