Cancer

Smoking, drinking and colorectal cancer

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death so screening, from age 50, is important. A team at Northwestern University now reports on some factors that may be important in colorectal cancer. They looked at the records of 161,172 patients with colorectal cancer. Those who were current alcohol or tobacco users tended to develop cancer an average of 7.8 years earlier than those who had never smoked or consumed alcohol.

Those who had stopped drinking and had never smoked developed cancer an average of 2.1 years earlier than abstainers. The impact of smoking was especially large for women - those who smoked but never drank developed cancer 6.3 years earlier than abstainers, compared to 3.7 years earlier among men. In addition, those who currently consumed alcohol and tobacco were more likely to develop distal tumors - that is, those in the lower left part of the colon. Men were generally more prone to distal tumors than women. The researchers also think that abstainers might be more prone to proximal tumors, on the right side of the colon. All this has implications for how screening is done, for colonoscopy is better at detecting proximal tumors and flexible sigmoidoscopy is more suited to distal tumors.

Source

www.healthandage.com

Archives of Internal Medicine 27th March 2006 Volume 166 pages 629-634

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