Abdominal pain, bleeding, diarrhea, low iron levels. These are the alarm bells that can signal the presence of colorectal cancer especially in people under 50 years of age. This is what is underlined by a study by the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute
“Colorectal cancer is not simply a disease that affects older people; we want young adults to be aware of and act on these potentially very significant signs and symptoms,” study coordinator Yin Cao said in a statement. . The team analyzed more than 5,000 colorectal cancer diagnoses in under-50s looking for early symptoms of the disease that had appeared between two years and three months before the diagnosis. It emerged that abdominal pain, bleeding, diarrhea, low iron levels were present in almost all patients. According to researchers’ estimates, the presence of just one of these symptoms doubles the risk of cancer; when there are two at the same time, the risk rises by 3.59 times; when there are three symptoms, the risk increases by 6.52 times.
“In this analysis we found that some young adults had symptoms up to two years before their diagnosis. This may be one reason why many of these younger patients had more advanced disease at the time of diagnosis than we normally see. in older people who are screened regularly,” added study lead author Cassandra DL Fritz.
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