Rectal cancer rates are increasing in people under 40, although rates of colon cancer have remained stable in younger people.

It isn’t clear why, but rectal cancer rates in this young group of men and women began increasing in 1984, rising about 3.8 percent a year.

Increases were similar for both sexes and all races. Read the rest of this entry »

Young patients with stage II or III colon cancer get equal benefit from chemotherapy as older patients, and they have similar side effects.

Five years after treatment, 67 percent of patients under the age of fifty hadn’t had their cancer spread beyond the colon (recurrence-free interval), the same percentage that applied to patients who were fifty or over.

Overall survival and disease-free survival were somewhat better for young patients because they had fewer other reasons for dying.  Overall and disease-free survival reflect patients who are alive five years after beginning treatment.  Neither includes people who have died from any cause, including their cancer. Read the rest of this entry »

Colondar Models Erika and Cathy

When colorectal cancer spreads to other parts of the body, young people under 50 who get chemotherapy benefit as much as those who are older.

With drug combinations, there is no difference between those under 50 and those who are 50 and older in responding to chemotherapy, how long it takes before cancer gets worse, or in survival time. Read the rest of this entry »

Patients under 40 appear to have more aggressive liver tumors from colorectal cancer and poorer long-term outcomes.

After surgery to remove the cancer that had spread to their liver, patients who were 40 or younger had poorer overall survival and shorter time until cancer returned.

The percentage of younger patients who were alive without cancer five years later was similar to older patients, which the research team attributed to more aggressive treatment for the young patients, along with repeated surgery.  Read the rest of this entry »

Sitting in the airplane from Los Angeles to Columbus where my two older daughters, 17 and 16, are competing for slots to represent the USA in the World Championships and Grand Prix events in diving, I am reviewing a manuscript that one of our fellows is planning to submit to a prestigious journal.

We are very excited by what we have found. It started more than 5 years ago, when we thought that we saw young females with colon cancer did worse than young males. We already knew that women are protected against colon cancer premenopausally, and large studies have shown that hormone replacement in postmenopausal women decreased colon cancer risk and polyp formation. We hypothesized that when a tumor develops under estrogen protection, the tumor might be more aggressive. Read the rest of this entry »