Younger people are increasingly being diagnosed with colorectal cancer, a disease typically associated with people age 50 and older, the American Medical Association (AMA) said in a July 24 report.
Colorectal cancer, which includes both colon and rectal cancers, is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States, even though overall incidence rates have declined since the 1980s, the AMA said.
Among people younger than 50, “the number of incidences has increased by about 2 percent per year,” the association said. “The death rate in the same population has risen 1 percent annually.”
The chief research officer of The Permanente Medical Group, Doug Corley, said in the report that colorectal cancer was a substantial problem that causes “a lot of mortality … and morbidity.”…