March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, and doctors are urging people much younger than typical colorectal cancer to be aware of the symptoms. For reasons that scientists say are still unclear, the rate of colorectal cancer in people under 50 has been steadily rising for around 30 years, the New York Times reports. “It’s unfortunately becoming a bigger problem every year,” says Michael Cecchini at the Center for Gastrointestinal Cancers. While older patients are still more likely to be diagnosed with the disease, colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death in men under 50. Among women in the same age group, it is second only to breast cancer.
- Some shocking statistics. Cecchini says early-onset colorectal cancer cases have been going up around 2% per year since the mid-1990s. Researchers estimate that people born around 1990 have double the risk of colon cancer compared to people in the 1950s, and four times the risk of rectal cancer.
