Is Prevalence of Colorectal Cancer Increasing Among Some Populations?
More Programs and Publications Featuring Dr. Fola May
In this program:
Colorectal cancer prevalence varies depending on the patient population. Dr. Fola May from UCLA Health explains changing incidence rates in different age and racial/ethnic groups, updated screening guidelines, and risk factors under research.
Transcript
Interviewer:
Is the incidence of colon cancer increasing among certain populations? I know you just mentioned that it is high in African American populations, but is it increasing?
Dr. Fola May:
Yeah, that's a good question too. And it's complicated because people are reassured that overall if you look at the rates since the 1980s, 1990s, colorectal cancer rates overall are going down, they're going down in every ethnic-racial group. The only group that we don't have strong data that it's going down, and it might actually be going up a little bit is the American Indian, Alaska Native population. But all of the other sub-groups where you're talking about white, Black, Asian, those rates are going down over time overall, with one exception, and this is what we call early-onset colorectal cancer. So we used to think of colorectal cancer as the disease that affected people in their 60s and 70s, and that's not the case anymore. Now we're starting to see colorectal cancer in people in their 40s and 50s. This is part of the reason why the United States Preventive Task Force in May of 2021, reduced the screening age to 45. So now we screen everyone at 45, and we know that in individuals who are between the ages of 25 and 50, so less than age 50, the rates of colorectal cancer are actually increasing, they're actually increasing by 1 to 2 percent per year since the 1990s.
So we do have some work. We don't know why this is happening, we don't know why we're seeing it in younger people now, and that's affecting all racial and ethnic groups, so in addition to working on colorectal counter-rates overall for the nation, we in particular, you have to pay attention to our younger adults now as well.
Interviewer:
It makes you think that they're definitely a connection to the social determinants of health, lifestyle, what we're eating.
Dr. Fola May:
Absolutely, I agree with you completely. And that's kind of the golden question right now, the million dollar question, I should say in colorectal cancer research is what's causing it? We don't know, but I think you're on to it. I think it's something environmental, it's something that we have done and the way we live our lives, especially in the Western Hemisphere, that's caused these rates to go up.
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