The hunt is on to learn why bowel cancer in young people is rising
Something in the environment or our lifestyles seems to be causing a rise in early-onset bowel cancer. Now, a study has the go-ahead to find the culprit
By Clare Wilson
6 March 2024
The number of people under 50 diagnosed with bowel cancer has been rising for three decades
Mohammed Elamine ALIOUI/Alamy
One of the most concerning trends in cancer is the rising incidence of several types of tumour in people under 50 – something that is especially marked for bowel cancer.
Now, a £20-million, five-year research project that aims to discover the cause of rising bowel cancer cases has got the go-ahead. It will use stored samples of blood, urine and faeces from millions of people from about 15 biobanks in Europe, North America and India.
The goal is to understand whether the rise is connected to changes in food, drink, medicines, air pollutants or other environmental chemicals, by measuring everything people are exposed to – known as their “exposome”.
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“The exposome is all elements of our external world that have impacts on our health,” says Andrew Chan at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, co-leader of the project.
The number of people under 50 diagnosed with bowel cancer has been going up for three decades. In the UK, for instance, there has been about a 50 per cent rise in these tumours in people aged 25 to 49 over this period, with similar trends in the US, Canada, Australia and several European countries.