Carlea Bauman, President of Fight Colorectal Cancer

I am deeply disappointed that President Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2014 budget would strip nearly $4 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Colorectal Cancer Control Program. The CDC estimates that the loss of funding will mean at least five fewer programs (out of the current 29) working to prevent colorectal cancer.

The president’s budget assumes that less federal funding is needed for direct screenings, such as colorectal, breast, and cervical screenings, because most health plans are required to cover these screenings without co-pays or deductibles, and because, starting in 2014, the Affordable Care Act ensures that no one can be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.

However, a number of barriers contribute to low colorectal cancer screening rates, such as lack of awareness and misinformation about screening – not just lack of health coverage. A well-funded colorectal cancer control program is needed to support important awareness and education initiatives across the country.

The hopeful news is that Congress does not have to accept the President’s budget. I urge colorectal cancer patients, survivors, caregivers, and physicians to let their members of Congress know that a cut to the colorectal cancer control programs at the CDC is unacceptable.

On a positive note, the President’s budget would increase research funding to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $471 million (a 1.5 percent increase) over FY 2012 amounts. The NIH estimates this will result in 351 more research project grants in FY 2014.

I recognize that the President and Congress are budgeting in a difficult economic environment, but our country needs dynamic thinking from our policymakers when it comes to budget decisions. Preventing colorectal cancer and targeted treatment reduce downstream costs to our health care system and to our federal government. That makes good budget sense to me.

Can drugs used to help lower cholesterol also keep colon cancer from returning? 

Researchers at the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) are seeking patients for a one-year clinical trial to determine if cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins) might help prevent the growth of precancerous (adenomatous) polyps and/or recurrent colorectal cancer.

The NSABP trial is sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and has recently expanded to include patients with stage 0, I, II or III colon cancer at diagnosis. Patients can enter the study up to one year after their initial diagnosis.

In 2011, Fight Colorectal Cancer’s late Director of Research Communications Kate Murphy wrote about the trial and its efforts to study whether patients taking statins also saw a side benefit of colorectal cancer prevention.

In her post, Murphy noted that research studies of statins and colorectal cancer showed some conflict. Researchers looking at cell processes have found that statins block a protein that is important in cell growth. Blocking its action may prevent colon cancer from spreading or polyps from developing.

NSABP Protocol Chair Dr. Bruce Boman said that although “some retrospective observational studies suggest that statins prevent colorectal cancer, others do not.” Writing in the NCI Cancer Bulletin, Boman also said that longer term, prospective studies on tumor development were needed to determine the efficacy of statins.

Patients who are already on a statin drug to treat high cholesterol are not eligible for the study. For more information about the trial, patients can email Coloncancer.prevention@nsabp.org or call 1-855-NSABPCA  (1-855-672-2722).  The trial organizers have also posted a detailed video overview of the P-5 Colon Cancer Prevention study.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has proposed an evaluation of its federally funded Colorectal Cancer Control Program to determine whether the program does what is it supposed to do: Increase state-level colorectal cancer screening rates and other related outcomes. Read the rest of this entry »

Fewer people in the U.S. are getting colorectal cancer (CRC), but that progress is seen much more often in well-off and highly educated Americans. In fact, the gap is widening in rate of colorectal deaths in people with less education and/or who live in deeply disadvantaged communities.

Researchers now have shown that differences in weight, diet and physical activity play a huge role in the higher rates and deaths from CRC among people of lower socioeconomic status.

In a paper published in the Sept. 4 2012 Journal of the National Cancer Institute, a careful statistical analysis of  a 10-year observational study of a half-million people indicated that helping people of lower education or income to change their diet, body weight, smoking and physical activity could be nearly as important as improved screening for reducing CRC deaths. Read the rest of this entry »

Being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes makes it more likely that men and women with colorectal cancer will die from colon or rectal cancer, from cardiovascular disease, or from any cause.

Diabetes increased risk of dying from colorectal cancer about 30 percent and more than doubled chances of dying from heart disease or stroke.  Overall deaths among early stage colon and rectal cancer patients was increased about 50 percent when they had diabetes before their colorectal cancer diagnosis.

For patients initially diagnosed with stage I, II, or III cancer, the chance of not dying from colorectal cancer within 5 years was 82 percent with Type 2 diabetes and 87 percent without it.

Five years after a colorectal cancer diagnosis about 3 out of 10 patients with diabetes died from any disease, compared to 2 out of 10 without diabetes.

Read the rest of this entry »