Colorectal cancer is now the top cancer killer of Americans younger than 50, highlighting that it is a threat not just to older adults, but increasingly to young men and women, too.
The deaths of Dawson’s Creek actor James Van Der Beek at 48 this week, and Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman a few years ago at 43, highlight the risk for younger adults.
“We’re now starting to see more and more people in the 20-, 30- and 40-year-old range developing colon cancer. At the beginning of my career, nobody that age had colorectal cancer,” says Dr John Marshall of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Centre at Georgetown University in Washington, who has been a cancer doctor for more than three decades.
That trend “is shaking us all, to be blunt”, adds Marshall, who is also medical consultant to the Colorectal Cancer Alliance, the largest colorectal cancer non-profit organisation in the US.
The colon is a question-mark-shaped organ that starts on one side of the abdomen and swoops to the other before ending with the rectum. Photo: Shutterstock
Here is what to know about colorectal cancer – at any age – and how to protect yourself.