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Establishing a research agenda for early-onset colorectal cancer
In this month's Editorial, Caitlin C. Murphy and Amit Singal recap population-level data on colorectal cancer incidence and mortality in the past 3 decades, documenting overall positive trends in screening, early detection of small cancers and premalignant lesions and better treatment options.
The authors then turn the focus on a different trend, seen since the 1990s, in younger patients (under the age of 50) in whom increased incidence rates have been observed continuously and discuss possible explanations, ranging from an increased number of cancers detected through screening to early-life exposure risks factors.
Image Credit: Stacey Geiger, US Air Force
Citation: (2018) PLoS Medicine Issue Image | Vol. 15(6) June 2018. PLoS Med 15(6): ev15.i06. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pmed.v15.i06
Published: June 29, 2018
Copyright: © 2018 Geiger, US Air Force. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
In this month's Editorial, Caitlin C. Murphy and Amit Singal recap population-level data on colorectal cancer incidence and mortality in the past 3 decades, documenting overall positive trends in screening, early detection of small cancers and premalignant lesions and better treatment options.
The authors then turn the focus on a different trend, seen since the 1990s, in younger patients (under the age of 50) in whom increased incidence rates have been observed continuously and discuss possible explanations, ranging from an increased number of cancers detected through screening to early-life exposure risks factors.
Image Credit: Stacey Geiger, US Air Force