The number of people under 55 diagnosed with colorectal cancer doubled from 1995 to 2019, a trend that has troubled public-health officials and confounded scientists. Now, researchers from the University of California, San Diego, have unearthed a possible explanation.<\/p>\n
Their findings, published in the journal Nature,<\/em> suggest that a \u201cgeno\u00adtoxin\u201d produced by certain strains of bacteria, including E. coli, may be linked to the rise of these early-onset cancer cases<\/a>. The toxin, colibactin, can \u00adattack cells in the gut of a young person and cause gene mutations that increase the risk of developing the\u00a0disease.<\/p>\n Think of it as one bacteria\u2019s weapon system for defending itself from other harmful bacteria, explains lead study author Ludmil Alexandrov, PhD, in an NPR interview.<\/p>\n Alexandrov and his team studied tissue samples from nearly 1,000 colorectal cancer patients across four continents. They discovered that these gene mutations were three to five times more prevalent in patients under age 40 than among those 70 or older. The colibactin attacks, they concluded, are occurring during childhood \u2014 when E. coli and its siblings dominate the gut microbiome<\/a> \u2014 and manifesting as disease in middle age.<\/p>\n \u201cOur estimate is that it happens within the first 10 years of life,\u201d Alexandrov says. \u201cSo if you get that mutation at age 5, that puts you 20 to\u00a030 years ahead\u00a0of schedule for getting colo\u00adrectal\u00a0cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n Researchers noted that the prevalence of this early-onset cancer was much lower in \u201crural, nonindustrialized\u201d areas of Africa and Asia than in the United States and Western Europe. That suggests diet and other lifestyle factors may be at play.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of these factors are known to substantially affect the microbiome<\/a>, and there is some evidence they may impact this [colibactin-producing] bacteria,\u201d Alexandrov notes. \u201cBut we really need to investigate each one\u00a0carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Why Is Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer on the Rise?<\/a> appeared first on Experience Life<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The number of people under 55 diagnosed with colorectal cancer doubled from 1995 to 2019, a trend that has troubled public-health officials and confounded scientists. Now, researchers from the University of California, San Diego, have unearthed a possible explanation. Their findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest that a \u201cgeno\u00adtoxin\u201d produced by certain strains of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 17:18:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}