For the study, which was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers examined records of nearly 500,000 people aged 20 years and older who were diagnosed with colon or rectal cancer from 1974 through 2013.
They found colon cancer diagnoses rose by 1 percent to 2.4 percent annually since the mid-1980s in adults aged 20 to 39 years. Among adults aged 40 to 50 years, the incidence rate of colon cancer rose by 0.5 percent to 1.3 percent since the mid-1990s, according to the study. For adults age 20 to 29, the rates of newly diagnosed rectal cancer rose 3.2 percent annually from 1974 to 2013.
In contrast, incidence rates have generally decreased for colon cancer since the mid-1980s for individual over 55 years of age, the study found. Additionally, rectal cancer incidence rates have steadily declined for this population since 1974.
“Trends in young people are a bellwether for the future disease burden,” Rebecca Siegel, strategic director of surveillance information services in the intramural research department at the American Cancer Society, said in a news release. “Our finding that colorectal cancer risk for millennials has escalated back to the level of those born in the late 1800s is very sobering. Educational campaigns are needed to alert clinicians and the general public about this increase to help reduce delays in diagnosis, which are so prevalent in young people, but also to encourage healthier eating and more active lifestyles to try to reverse this trend.”
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