Roswell Park Study May Provide Clues to Treating Colorectal Cancer More Effectively in Younger Patients
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer CenterWhile the incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC) has dropped significantly among older adults in recent years — a trend attributed to regular screening colonoscopies and lower smoking rates — the opposite is true for people born between 1981 and 1996, who have double the risk compared with people born in 1950. There’s an urgent need to identify more-effective therapies for those younger people: Approximately 58% of patients age 50 or under have advanced, distant disease at the time of diagnosis, and only 14% of that group will survive five years.