Eight years ago, Paula Chambers-Raney from Houston, Texas, suffered from stomach pain, blood in her stool, and anemia. Her primary care physician told her that she had hemorrhoids. Then, over the next 18 months, other clinicians told her that she might have irritable bowel syndrome, she had probably eaten something red, and she should eat more green leafy vegetables for her anemia. After losing her job because of the number of sick days she had taken, with her health still not improving, she went to her county hospital’s emergency room for a colonoscopy. “They found a baseball-sized tumor,” says Chambers-Raney. “I was 44 years old and up until then was told I was too young to have something serious like colon cancer.”

Recognizing the alarming trend of younger people being diagnosed with colorectal cancer (CRC), in 2018, the American Cancer Society, followed by other health organizations, began recommending lowering the age for screening from the age of 50 years to the age of 45 years. A new study appearing in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (doi:10.1093/jnci/djad068) is the latest to validate this change.

八年前，来自德克萨斯州休斯顿的保拉·钱伯斯-雷尼 (Paula Chambers-Raney) 遭受胃痛、便血和贫血的困扰。她的初级保健医生告诉她，她患有痔疮。然后，在接下来的 18 个月里，其他临床医生告诉她，她可能患有肠易激综合症，她可能吃了红色的东西，她应该多吃绿叶蔬菜来治疗贫血。因请病假过多而失业后，身体状况仍不见好转，她到县医院急诊室做了结肠镜检查。“他们发现了一个棒球大小的肿瘤，”钱伯斯-雷尼说。“当时我 44 岁，直到那时我才被告知我还​​太年轻，不会患上像结肠癌这样的严重疾病。”

认识到年轻人被诊断患有结直肠癌 (CRC) 的趋势令人担忧，2018 年，美国癌症协会和其他健康组织开始建议将筛查年龄从 50 岁降低到 45 岁。发表在《国家癌症研究所杂志》(doi:10.1093/jnci/djad068) 上的一项新研究是验证这一变化的最新研究。