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Rise in Colon Cancer Among Gen X and Millennials

posted by on Wednesday March 01 2017, @04:16PM   
from the too-much-sitting-on-our-asses dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A new study finds that compared to people born around 1950, when colorectal cancer risk was lowest, those born in 1990 have double the risk of colon cancer and quadruple the risk of rectal cancer.

The study is led by American Cancer Society scientists and appears in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. It finds colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence rates are rising in young and middle-aged adults, including people in their early 50s, with rectal cancer rates increasing particularly fast. As a result, three in ten rectal cancer diagnoses are now in patients younger than age 55.

To get a better understanding, investigators led by Rebecca Siegel, MPH of the American Cancer Society used "age-period-cohort modeling," a quantitative tool designed to disentangle factors that influence all ages, such as changes in medical practice, from factors that vary by generation, typically due to changes in behavior. They conducted a retrospective study of all patients 20 years and older diagnosed with invasive CRC from 1974 through 2013 in the nine oldest Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program registries. There were 490,305 cases included in the analysis.

The study found that after decreasing since 1974, colon cancer incidence rates increased by 1% to 2% per year from the mid-1980s through 2013 in adults ages 20 to 39. In adults 40 to 54, rates increased by 0.5% to 1% per year from the mid-1990s through 2013.

Also at The New York Times

Study: Colorectal cancer incidence patterns in the United States, 1974-2013; J Natl Cancer Inst (2017) 109(8): DOI: 10.1093/jnci/djw322

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Original Submission

• SEER poplulation is changing (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 01 2017, @05:07PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 01 2017, @05:07PM (#473394)

  SEER 9 Registries
  -The SEER 9 registries are Atlanta, Connecticut, Detroit, Hawaii, Iowa, New Mexico, San Francisco-Oakland, Seattle-Puget Sound, and Utah. Data are available for cases diagnosed from 1973 and later for these registries with the exception of Seattle-Puget Sound and Atlanta. The Seattle-Puget Sound and Atlanta registries joined the SEER program in 1974 and 1975, respectively.

  SEER 13 Registries
  -The SEER 13 registries consist of the SEER 9, as described above, plus Los Angeles, San Jose-Monterey, Rural Georgia and the Alaska Native Tumor Registry. Data are available from all cases diagnosed from 1992 and later for these registries. These registries report on expanded race.

  SEER 18 Registries
  -The SEER 18 registries consist of the SEER 13, as described above, plus Greater California, Greater Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and New Jersey. Data are available from all cases diagnosed from 2000 and later for these registries. Louisiana cases diagnosed from July - December 2005 are excluded from most statistical analyses: all Louisiana cases are excluded from prevalence analyses. See Adjustments for Areas Impacted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita for more information.

  Databases with Varying Registry/Year Groupings
  -SEER research databases that do not require population data (e.g., for calculating frequencies and survival) are available with varying registries and years of data. In these databases,

          SEER 9 registries contribute cases diagnosed from 1973 through the current data year, except for Seattle-Puget Sound and Atlanta, which contribute cases beginning with 1974 and 1975, respectively.
          Los Angeles, San Jose-Monterey, Rural Georgia and the Alaska Native Tumor Registry contribute cases from the period 1992 through the current data year; and
          Greater California, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, and Greater Georgia contribute cases from 2000 through the current data year, with the exception of the July - December 2005 Louisiana cases.

  SEER recommends that when performing an analysis, you subset based on year or registry so you have consistent geographic coverage for the period of the analysis.
  Historical Groupings

  The following registry terms are no longer used in standard SEER analyses, but may be seen in historical publications and statistics.

  SEER 11 Registries
  -The SEER 11 registries consist of the SEER 9, as described above, plus Los Angeles and San Jose-Monterey. Los Angeles and San Jose-Monterey joined the SEER program in 1992. Therefore, data for the SEER 11 are available from 1992 on. SEER 11 has also been used in the past to refer to SEER 13 analyses excluding Rural Georgia and the Alaska Native Tumor Registry.

  SEER 17 Registries
  -SEER 17 was used frequently before Greater Georgia was added. The SEER 17 registries consist of the SEER 13, as described above, plus Greater California, Kentucky, Louisiana, and New Jersey. Data are available from all cases diagnosed from 2000 and later for these registries. Louisiana cases diagnosed from July - December 2005 are excluded from most statistical analyses.

  https://seer.cancer.gov/registries/terms.html [cancer.gov]

  To deal with this, they are basically throwing out half the data (I bet they did check when including the more recently added areas...). From the paper:

  We conducted a retrospective cohort study of patients age 20 years and older diagnosed with invasive CRC from 1974 through 2013 in the nine oldest Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program areas (Atlanta [from 1975], Connecticut, Detroit, Hawaii, Iowa, New Mexico, Seattle-Puget Sound, San Francisco-Oakland, and Utah)
  [...]
  Additionally, long-term population-based cancer occurrence data in the United States are limited to nine SEER registries, and thus may not be generalizable to the broader population.

  Personally I don't think looking at trends over time is a very wise idea from the SEER data. Too much changes about methodology (eg data collection, etc) over time, so you are forced to throw out tons of it or make arbitrary filtering decisions. You can see how they just handwave the issue here.

  That said, SEER is great and data collection projects like that (even if somewhat flawed) should be funded much, much more instead of the massive amounts of NHST bs we currently have.

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