How should we interpret rising cases of colorectal cancer in younger people? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Colorectal cancer is occurring more frequently in those in the forty to forty nine year old age group, leading to recommendations for screening earlier. Now there’s a rise in cases seen in the last several years, but William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, says that’s most likely a success story of increasing rates of screening for the disease.

Nelson: One of the studies was a letter in response to the incidence of colorectal cancer in that age group. Aged 45 to 49 what they saw was increasing incidence of new colorectal cancer in that age group just in the last few years there's been an increase a sharp increase in the number of new cases. This has not been associated with a sharp increase in the number of new cases diagnosed at a late stage. That's been steadily increasing slowly so the thought is that this sudden increase is a result of screening detecting the new cases.  :34

Nelson says screening remains underutilized and efforts to increase uptake are underway. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.