Post by Fred Hutch

Bekah Kooy, a physician assistant, was 38 and seemingly healthy when symptoms arrived quickly and she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She joins a growing number of younger adults in the U.S. who are being diagnosed with colorectal cancer. U.S. Experts often point to diet, physical inactivity, smoking and alcohol use as possible reasons for the uptick, but also say a lot remains unknown about why the disease is trending younger. At Fred Hutch, scientists are contributing to the unfolding research by studying other potential, more complex risk factors, such as how exposures in the environment might be interacting differently with people’s intestinal tracts and somehow leading to precancerous polyps. “Our genetics hasn’t changed as a species, so there must be some environmental reasons,” said Dr. Neelendu Dey, a gastroenterologist at Fred Hutch.