There has been a dramatic increase in gastrointestinal cancers in people under 50, according to a new review.
Gastrointestinal cancers, such as colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer, “represent the fastest rising cancer in the early beginning in the United States,” researchers wrote in a review published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Thursday.
Colorectal cancer developing in the colon or rectum was the most common among early gastrointestinal cancers in the United States in 2022, with just over 20,800 people diagnosed.
There were 2,689 diagnoses of gastric cancer developing in the stomach off that year, followed by 2,657 diagnoses of pancreatic cancer and 875 diagnoses of esophageal cancer.
Most gastrointestinal gastrointestinal cancer is linked to risk factors that could be changed, such as obesity, poor quality diet and a somewhat inactive lifestyle. Smoking of cigarettes and drinking alcohol is other risk factors.
“That’s really what people did or exposed to when they were infants, children, adolescents who are probably contributing to their risk of developing cancer as a young adult,” Dr. Kimmie NG, review co-author and director of Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, to NBC News.
There are also risk factors that patients do not have control over, such as family history and hereditary syndromes. People with type cancer cancer could have inflammatory bowel disease.
Researchers wrote in the review: “The prognosis for patients with gi-cancer forms in early beginning corresponds to or worse than that of patients with later beginning gi-cancerous forms that highlight the need for improved methods of prevention and early detection.”
The American Cancer Society recommends that people at the average risk of colorectal cancer start regular screening at the age of 45 before 2018, ACS recommended screenings start at the age of 50.
“It never used to happen in this age group, and now a very significant increase in 20-, 30- and 40-year-old colon cancer said,” Dr. John Marshall, Chief Medical Consultant at NonProfit-Colorectal Cancer Alliance, which was not involved in the review, for NBC News.
It is still unclear why young patients with gastrointestinal cancers may have poorer survival rates than older patients.
“My personal feeling is that it is because we find them at a more advanced stage because people don’t really think about colon or other gi cancer forms when they see a young person with these non -specific complaints,” Dr. Howard Hochster, director of gastrointestinal oncology at Rutgers Cancer Institute and Rwjbarnabas Health in New Jersey, which was not involved in the review of NBC News.
But NG said, even when taking into account the cancer stage, young patients still seem to have worse survival rates and questioned whether there is a biological reason.