New Study Shows More Colon Cancer Deaths in Young People; Reason Unknown
New research has revealed that more Americans under the age of 55 are dying of colorectal cancer, otherwise known as colon cancer.
A study recently conducted by the American Cancer Society shows that colorectal cancer is claiming the lives of more young people now more than ever.
To conduct the study, researchers used data from the National Center for Health Statistics and examined more than 242,000 colorectal cancer deaths recorded from 1970 to 2014. The research involved deaths in people aged 20 to 54.
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At the helm of the study is lead investigator Rebecca Siegel, who is the strategic director of surveillance information services at the American Cancer Society. Siegel spoke to CBS News about their findings.
"This is not good news," Siegel said. "We looked at adults from ages 20 to 54 and following several decades of pretty rapid declines in death rates, over the past decade deaths in this age group have been increasing."
She added: "This indicates that there's actually a true increase in disease. It's not just detection of disease that was there and that we're catching it earlier."
And while the data is important, Siegel and her fellow researchers are unaware as to why more young people are dying from colorectal cancer, revealing that "no one really knows why this is happening."
Siegel did acknowledge, however, that obesity could be a contributing factor in the rise of colorectal cancer deaths in people aged 20 to 54. She also mentioned the idle lifestyle that more and more Americans were adopting as a possible factor. However, no conclusions about the extent of their effects can be made.
Thankfully, more research will be done in order to get to the bottom of this case. Siegel and her team, along with the American Cancer Society, just require enough time.
"I think we're going to need more time for etiologic studies to try to understand this," Siegel revealed.
Siegel's study can be found in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
