Colorectal Cancer | health article

There are several known risk factors for colorectal cancer. Being a male poses higher risk of colorectal cancer compared to being female. Increasing age is associated with an increase in the risk of colorectal cancer. Incidence of colorectal cancer is higher among African Americans compared to Caucasians. Risk of developing colorectal cancer is much higher for people

Excluding skin cancer, colorectal cancer is the third commonest cancer diagnosed in the United States. Each year over 100,000 Americans are diagnosed with colon cancer and over 50 percent of these patients will die from colorectal cancer. Colon cancer incidence is not much different between males and females,

Since most colon polyps and early cancers are silent (produce no symptoms), it is important to do screening and surveillance for colon cancer in patients without symptoms or signs of the polyps or cancers. Screening tests are used to look for disease in people who do not have any symptoms. Although there are good colorectal cancer screening tests, not enough people have them done. The majority of colorectal cancers would likely have been avoided if the people had only undergone regular and appropriate screenings.

Colorectal cancer is also known as colon or rectal cancer because it is a cancer that is found in either the colon or the rectum. In most cases colorectal cancer will begin as a polyp that develops on the lining of the colon and in most cases in benign. Even though these polyps may be benign at one point, they can turn cancerous at any time and when they do they will continue to grow and spread until detected.

It is thought that colorectal cancers take many years to develop, usually starting as a pre-cancerous polyp in the color or rectum. Because they tend to take such a long time to develop, there is time to detect the growths and remove them before they become troublesome. This is why colorectal cancer is a very preventable disease.

Colorectal cancer, also called colon cancer or large bowel cancer, includes cancerous growths in the colon, rectum and appendix. With 655,000 deaths worldwide per year, it is the fourth most common form of cancer in the United States and the third leading cause of cancer-related death in the Western world.

The disease tends to progress slowly and remains localized for a long time. It develops mainly after the age of fifty and affects men and women equally. The incidence of colorectal cancer is exceeded only by lung cancer in both men and women and by prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women.

Less well understood is the role of Vitamin D as a survival factor in patients who have already been diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Now, a newly updated clinical research study from Harvard University, just published in the British Journal of Cancer, suggests that higher Vitamin D levels in colorectal cancer survivors may be associated with a significantly greater likelihood of surviving the third most common cause of cancer death in the United States.

The numbers are sobering? an estimated 102,900 new cases of colon; another 39,670 cases of rectal cancer will be diagnosed in the United States during 2010. The good news coming out of this work is that even aspirin taken at the lowest dose helps, and the protective effect takes hold after only one year.

The study found that taking low dose aspirin every day was tied to a 22% reduced risk of colorectal cancer. After five years, the risk dropped by 30%. What was truly intriguing about the research was that increasing the aspirin dose might not be helpful.
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