Colon cancer advances faster in men

Posted: 28 September 2011

WASHINGTON: Men with colon cancer tend to have more advanced tumors than women of the same age, said a study out Tuesday that suggested screening guidelines may need to be adjusted for sex and age.

Currently, men and women age 50 and older are urged to get a colonoscopy to screen for growths or polyps that could form into tumors. Colorectal cancer is the fourth leading cancer killer worldwide, taking 610,000 lives per year.

The study in the Journal of the American Medical Association examined 44,350 participants in a national screening colonoscopy program from 2007 to 2010 in Austria.

The screenings look for adenomas, which are polyps or benign tumors as well as for particularly advanced adenomas and colorectal cancer.

The analysis found "a significantly higher rate of these lesions among men compared with women in all age groups, suggesting that male sex constitutes an independent risk factor for colorectal carcinoma," according to the study.

For instance, five percent of men age 50-54 had advanced adenomas compared to just 2.9 percent of women.

The rate of colorectal cancer in 55-59-year-old men (1.3 percent) was about the same as in women a decade older (65-69-year-old women were diagnosed at a rate of 1.2 percent).

The prevalence of colorectal cancer overall was twice as high among men, at 1.5 percent, compared to 0.7 percent in women.

The researchers noted that "deciding whether to adjust the age at which screening begins also requires considering whether the recommended age for women should be older or the recommended age for men younger."

However, the study stopped short of saying what that new age should be, saying further studies "are needed to demonstrate the relative clinical effectiveness of screening at different ages."

-AFP/pn


Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Colon cancer advances faster in men

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Men with prostate cancer at higher colon cancer risk: study

And this is one more thing that men should be watching out for.
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WASHINGTON - Men who have prostate cancer have a higher risk of developing colon cancer than men who do not have prostate cancer, US researchers said on Tuesday.

Researchers at the University at Buffalo (UB) in New York state found in a study of more than 2,000 men that patients diagnosed with prostate cancer had significantly more abnormal colon polyps, known as adenomas, and advanced adenomas than men without prostate cancer.

Most colon cancers begin as adenomas, the researchers said as they presented the findings of their study at the annual meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology in San Antonio, Texas.

"Our study is the first to show that men with prostate cancer are at increased risk of developing colon cancer," said report author Ognian Pomakov, an assistant professor at UB's department of medicine.

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in American men, only behind lung cancer. Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer diagnosed in men and women in the United States.

The researchers reviewed the patient records, colonoscopy reports and pathology reports, as well as data on the prevalence of adenomas, advanced adenomas, cancerous adenomas and their location within the colon, in 2,011 men who had colonoscopies at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Buffalo.

When the researchers compared the colonoscopy results from 188 men diagnosed with prostate cancer with the rest of the patients, they found that the prostate cancer patients had significantly higher prevalence of abnormal polyps and advanced adenomas compared to the rest of the study sample.

Forty-eight per cent of prostate cancer patients had adenomas, compared to 30.8 per cent of the men without prostate cancer. More than 15 per cent of
prostate cancer patients had advanced adenomas compared to 10 per cent of the men without prostate cancer.

Pomakov stressed the importance of men who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer having routine screening for colon cancer and called for larger studies to be done to determine if screening for colorectal cancer should begin earlier for prostate cancer patients than the currently recommended age of 50.

- CNA/al


From ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:Men with prostate cancer at higher colon cancer risk: study
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