Gastrointestinal research leaders met at Aurora-based University of Colorado Cancer Center to discuss several factors related to early-onset colorectal cancer.
What you should know:
1. Fight Colorectal Cancer organized the workshop. Discussions were centered around four goals:
- Prioritizing early-onset CRC risk factors to study
- Identifying studies that might offer insight into risk factors
- Determining resources for new studies
- Understanding policy-maker perspectives that may influence new studies
2. In general, CRC rates are falling, but early-onset CRC rates rose 1.5 percent over the last two decades. Researchers don't know why early-onset CRC rates are increasing.
3. Researchers identified a number of elements that could potentially impact early-onset CRC and agreed sometime in the 1950s or 1960s, there was a shift in the birth cohort which increased early-onset CRC risk in people born after a certain point.
4. Fight CRC President Angie Davis said, "From the perspective of Fight CRC, we want to understand the research priorities and work with funders and policy makers to ensure this research takes place. We want to go to our partners and say, here is the roadmap. What comes out of this, we want to make it actionable."
5. About 40 researchers attended the workshop.