Colorectal cancer: 5 things you should know about the disease
Nearly one in 10 new cancer cases and cancer deaths in the U.S. is tied to colorectal cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Staff Video, USA TODAY
Colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer-related death among people under 50 in the United States, according to new evidence from the American Cancer Society.
The evidence, published Thursday, Jan. 22 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed colorectal cancer jumped from the fifth-leading cancer death in the early 1990s to the first.
“We weren’t expecting colorectal cancer to rise to this level so quickly, but now it is clear that this can no longer be called an old person’s disease,” Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, senior author of the study and senior vice president of surveillance, prevention and health services research at the American Cancer Society, said in a news release.
Lung cancer dropped from ranking first to fourth and leukemia dropped from third to fifth, according to the report. And breast cancer remained the second-leading cancer death overall and first in females.
The report used data from the National Center for Health Statistics to analyze more than 1 million people from 1990 through 2023 across 50 U.S. states and the District of Colombia.
“Today’s news confirms what experts have been predicting for years, as we witnessed young-onset colorectal cancer rates rising quickly and claiming too many lives,” Michael Sapienza, CEO of the Colorectal Cancer Alliance, said in a news release.
Dr. Timothy Cannon, director of the Inova Schar Cancer Molecular Tumor Board and associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, called the increases in young onset colorectal cancer death “striking and very worrisome.”
“For the past five years, experts have predicted a future where colorectal cancer becomes the most common cause of cancer death in the under 50 population in the U.S., but the projections for that date usually fell in the 2040 to 2050 range. It turns out that this future has already arrived,” Cannon, who was not part of the study, told USA TODAY.
The authors of the report noted these findings highlight the need for more research to identify causes for increasing early-onset colorectal cancer.
“With colorectal cancer we don’t know what the factor driving the increased incidence is or if there even is a primary driver,” Cannon said. “This leaves us frustrated and a little aimless as a community and often shifts the focus to screening as opposed to lifestyle changes.”
According to the ACS Cancer Facts & Figures 2024 report, around 55% of colorectal cancers might be able to be traced to a few potential risk factors, such as: lack of exercise, excessive smoking and alcohol consumption, excess body weight, eating lots of red and processed meats, and not consuming enough calcium, whole grains and fiber.
The authors also urge educating clinicians and the public about symptoms to help earlier diagnosis and more timely treatment.
“While we await answers for why colorectal cancer rates are up, lives can be saved now through symptom awareness and destigmatization, and more screening uptake, as three in four people under 50 are diagnosed with advanced disease,” Rebecca Siegel, lead report author and senior scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society, said in a release.
The report did have some good news. Besides colorectal cancer, mortality has decreased for every leading cancer-related death in people younger than 50, including breast cancer and leukemia despite increasing incidence.
Last week, an annual report from the American Cancer Society also showed improving cancer survival rates in the U.S.
Seven in 10 people now survive five years or more after diagnosis, the report found. This 70% figure, up from only half in the mid-1970s, is based on diagnoses from 2015 to 2021. The five-year measure is a common time frame used to measure survival rates.
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