Colon cancer now leading cause of cancer deaths under 50 in US | US news

Colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death in the United States among people under 50, according to a new analysis from the American Cancer Society, prompting experts and people in this age group with the disease to warn others to take certain symptoms seriously.

Becca Lynch, who works in cybersecurity in Denver, Colorado, was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer last year when she was just 29 years old. At first, she thought her symptoms couldn’t be serious: “I put it down to stress,” she said.

Today, she takes care to describe her symptoms in great detail, not because it’s fun to talk about, but because she doesn’t want others to miss these signs.

At first, she had “pencil-thin” stools and had to “go to number two much more frequently”, up to five or six times a day. Eventually, she started seeing thick, black blood with every movement.

She decided to see a doctor after seeing an Instagram video from Cass Costley, in which she explained how similar symptoms turned out to be colon cancer. Still, Lynch put off a colonoscopy for several months; when she had it, she was diagnosed with stage 3B colon cancer.

Lynch’s story is “very common,” says Rebecca Siegel, an epidemiologist and senior director of cancer surveillance research at the American Cancer Society and lead author of the analysis.

About three-quarters of people under 50 already have advanced colorectal cancer at the time of diagnosis, “because they haven’t been screened through regular colonoscopies and they don’t take their symptoms seriously because they think they’re too young,” Siegel said.

Many people think they have hemorrhoids because it is the first result that comes up when looking for blood in the stool. Costley, the woman who inspired Lynch to get checked and who has since died of cancer, told Today that she, too, thought she probably had hemorrhoids and was “ignoring it.”

Siegel urges anyone experiencing rectal bleeding for more than two weeks to see their doctor immediately. For people without symptoms who want to get screened, stool tests like Cologuard and the FIT test are a good way to rule out potential cancer for people who don’t want to have a colonoscopy right away, she added.

Among people over 65, colorectal cancer “continues to decline rapidly by more than 2 percent per year,” Siegel said, while among younger people it has increased from the fifth to the leading cause of cancer death since the 1990s.

It also means that doctors who treat colorectal cancer must learn to meet the needs of a younger population.

“Doctors are used to treating people in their 60s who don’t care about their fertility. They don’t worry as much about sexual dysfunction,” Siegel explained. “Many surveys reveal that young survivors find they cannot have children once they finish treatment. »

Siegel also emphasized that doctors should discuss possible options for preserving fertility and sexual function before starting treatment.

Experts don’t yet know exactly why colorectal cancer has increased among young people, but Siegel said it’s an example of the “birth cohort effect.” The fact that people born after the 1950s face increased risk “tells us that there was some exposure, a risk factor introduced in the mid-20th century that increases our risk of getting this disease,” Siegel said, “and it increases more and more with each subsequent generation.”

Many are looking to changes in the food supply for answers. Increased consumption of processed foods, processed meats, and foods packaged in plastic are all possible, but unproven, factors.

“We now know that microplastics can cross the blood-brain barrier, so the colon is clearly exposed,” Siegel said.

Some populations are more at risk than others. Alaska Natives have the highest colorectal cancer mortality rate in the world, but Siegel said that because the total number of Alaska Natives is so small, it’s difficult to get funding to study why.

“Their rates are so extraordinarily high…if there could be dedicated funding for this, I think it would be pretty easy to understand,” Siegel said, adding that understanding why Alaska Natives are more at risk could also help understand why overall youth risk is increasing.

Known lifestyle factors, such as inactivity, obesity and alcohol consumption, do not fully explain the increase in diagnoses among young people.

Prosanta Chakrabarty, an evolutionary biologist based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, now 47, said he “lived a pretty clean and healthy life” and even had annual colonoscopies, but was still diagnosed with advanced colon cancer in 2024. After undergoing 24 rounds of chemotherapy in total over two different courses, he still has a floating tumor.

“There are so many things that I didn’t realize were options,” Chakrabarty said, including “doing chemo forever.”

Chakrabarty and Lynch are speaking publicly about their cancer to help people overcome the “embarrassment” that prevents diagnosis. Lynch posted an AMA on Reddit about his cancer. Chakrabarty posted a video of himself walking inside a giant, inflatable colon on Bluesky.

Lynch, who has had no symptoms since her surgery but is still closely monitored, said that after Costley’s Instagram video helped her get her diagnosis, she felt compelled to do the same for others: “That’s part of why I agreed to an interview about my poops.”