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
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday March 01 2017, @09:10PM
Video games? Sitting on the couch all day, that and video recorders.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].