Tackling the Increasing Incidence of Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer

Dr. Mohamed Salem, gastrointestinal medical oncologist at the Levine Cancer Institute at Atrium Health in North Carolina, tells guest host Dr. John Sweetenham, associate director of clinical affairs at the UT Southwestern Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, about the disturbing rise of early-onset colorectal cancer, the impact of socioeconomic disparities on patient outcomes and potential interventions to improve detection.   Transcript Dr. John Sweetenham: Hello, I'm John Sweetenham, the associate director of Clinical Affairs at UT Southwestern Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center and guest host of the ASCO Daily News podcast today. I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Mohamed Salem, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at the Levine Cancer Institute at Atrium Health in North Carolina. Dr. Salem is going to be discussing with us the disturbing rise in early onset colorectal cancer and the impact of socioeconomic disparities on patient outcomes and potential interventions to increase screening, particularly in younger populations. Mohamed, many thanks for joining us on the podcast today. Dr. Mohamed Salem: Thank you, Dr. Sweetenham for the kind invitation. And I have to tell you, I'm very grateful for this invitation to cover this topic. And also, thanks to the ASCO Daily News team for shedding the light on this. Dr. John Sweetenham: Great. Before we start, I should mention that my guest and I have no conflicts of interest relating to the topic today. Full disclosures of all guests on the ASCO Daily News podcast are available on our transcripts at ASCO.org/podcast. Mohamed, low socioeconomic status has been associated with worse survival in patients with colorectal cancer, otherwise known as CRC. But there hasn't been as much focus on the impact of socioeconomic status for those patients who have early onset colorectal cancer and, specifically, I guess, we mean by that, those patients who develop this condition in early adulthood. Of course, it's quite well known, generally, that adolescents and young adult patients who develop various types of cancer appear to have worse outcomes than both their childhood and their adult counterparts. Your study, published in The Oncologist, looked at the impact of sociodemographic disparities and insurance status on survival of patients with early onset colorectal cancer and, maybe not surprisingly, in some respects, based on experience in other diseases, demonstrated worse outcomes. Could you talk to us a little about the data in your study and how that might inform programs to improve early detection and treatment of patients with colorectal cancer? Dr. Mohamed Salem: Sure. As you mentioned, Dr. Sweetenham, there are two problems. A socioeconomic problem, which is, by itself, a huge challenge we are facing as a community. On the other hand, two, this colorectal cancer problem in younger adults is another issue that we have been facing now for maybe a decade or two. Rebecca Siegel just published a paper a couple of years ago showed that the increased incidence of [colorectal] cancer in adults, it's on the rise. And it brings many challenges to this population in terms of the diagnosis, their care, and their outcome. But when you couple this with the challenge that socioeconomic status impact on the outcome of our patient, this becomes a very, very complicated problem. So, our group wanted to look not only on the impact of socioeconomic status, but the impact on that problem on patients with early onset colorectal cancer and see how complicated this will be to their outcome. We examined more than 30,000 patients, and we chose the cutoff [at age] 40. Early onset definition could vary a little bit, so you have 40, you have 45, some people think even 50, but we choose 40 just because we wanted to focus on the very young group. We utilized National Cancer Database and we obviously thank them for giving us access to this data. And we tried to look at the impact of socioeconomic status, and it was stunning. We found that survival decreased with the decrease of socioeconomic status. So, the patient who carried the best survival was those with highest socioeconomic status and then the lower SES goes, the worse is their survival outcomes. And also, not just survival. We found that if you have low socioeconomic status, you are more likely to have stage III or IV tumors, which is, as you know, more advanced cancer, you're more likely to have node-positive disease, and also, you're more likely to present with stage IV colon cancer. So, just to highlight how impactful the socioeconomic status or factor in the presentation in disease and the outcome, and not only this one. We will also looked at insurance status. It was very clear that patients with no insurance or Medicaid, they do much worse. They had the higher risk of mortality compared to patients with commercial private insurance. And you have to wonder having this issue with being young adult and having a cancer and then having no insurance, have no means to access care. That's something, as you mentioned, perhaps we could, as a community, look into it and try to remove those barriers, to hopefully improve the patient outcome. Dr. John Sweetenham: Yeah, one of the things that struck me from looking at your paper was the fact that stage to stage, age for age. If patients had insurance, it did mediate some of the adverse prognostic effects of socioeconomic status, if I read the paper correctly, which does suggest to me that part of the problem at least is access to care. Would you agree with that? Dr. Mohamed Salem: I totally agree, 100%. And it's also interesting that we even looked at multiple angles. We looked at uninsured, by itself. We looked at Medicaid insurance. We looked at private versus not private. And it doesn't matter how we look at it, and adjusting for all other co-founders and stage, insurance status played a significant role on the impact of survival for those patients. Dr. John Sweetenham: Very interesting that I think that there are several other studies in other diseases which are beginning to show very similar emerging patterns. Just moving on from that a little, I think remarkable numbers that stood out from the studies which you cite in your article in The Oncologist is that 2015 study by Bailey et al. which was predicting that, by 2030, the incidence rates will have increased really quite substantially. And for the younger age group, those aged 20 to 34, the estimate was at a 90% increase in incidence. And for those in the 35 to 49 year age group, the suggestion was that incidence rates would increase by almost 28%, so I think there are a couple of questions that I have regarding that. The numbers are pretty sobering. Can you talk to us a little bit about what we know about the factors that are driving this increase in incidence? Dr. Mohamed Salem: Sure. I do agree with you, Dr. Sweetenham. I think this are very alarming numbers and very alarming phenomena. I'm sure you remember when we're in medical school and fellowship, we used to think colorectal cancer is a disease of older people. Unfortunately, now, we're seeing younger patients getting this. Not the age of 50 or 40 or 30 as you mentioned, even 20 years old. My youngest patient is 17-years-old. And it's not uncommon for me to see patients who are like 20-21 years old coming with this disease. There are many risk factors for colorectal cancer, as you know, obesity, diabetes, tobacco, alcohol, exercise, and other genetics and hereditary reasons. But the truth is that many of those patients come to our clinic are fit. They eat well, they don't smoke, they don't drink, so it appears there is something else going on. And there are many theories going into this, but the truth is that we're actually not sure 100% what are the exact reason for that rise in incidence among young adults. Some people think microbiome might have a role here. Some people think obesity, as I mentioned, has more impact on younger people than older people, but I think also is this is an area of research now. And we hope they'll continue to look into this and try to identify the exact reason why this is happening. But I also wanted to touch base a little bit about an important issue, because the paper you cited, both the American Cancer Society and the task force took the screening or issued recommendations regarding the screening to be from [age] 50 to go now to 45. We used to have a screening recommendation at age of 50 for average risk. Now, as of 2018, the American Cancer Society said you should be screened at 45, and most recently, the task force said the same thing. However, if you think about it, our study looked at patients who are [age] 40. So, the change in the screening really is not going to impact them, because it's still not even at the age of screening and, therefore, education, outreach and educating our patients, our population about the risk and the symptoms and signs of this disease is extremely important  because it makes a huge difference if the cancer gets detected at stage I, which most of the prime surgery is enough and 99% of patients or more than 90% of patients would be cured and don't even need anything besides surgery, versus, as I mentioned, when they start to come into the office with stage IV disease. Now, it's a totally different story and totally different outcome. Dr. John Sweetenham: Yeah, and I guess one of the other questions, the whole screening strategy issue is obviously a very big issue right now and I guess somewhat controversial as well. But I think it's true to say, and if I'm wrong, I stand corrected, that in general, compliance with screening as a whole tends to diminish with age. So, I'm sure, for all kinds of reasons, many of which may be kind of socioeconomic, financially-related, younger individuals are less likely to get screened, either because of insurance or what other issues they may have. And so, I wonder as age goes down, and I'd make the assumption that it may be true, that compliance with screening protocols also goes down. It'll be interesting to speculate on what are going to be useful interventions, particularly in that very young age group, might lead to earlier detection of colorectal cancer in, let's say, a 22-year-old. It can be a difficult issue to unravel, I think. Dr. Mohamed Salem: I totally agree. I think it gets very complicated very quickly because, one, as you mentioned, access to care and coverage and being able to afford this is one issue. But also, if you think about it from logistics, younger people need to work. Maybe they have kids, they need to take care of them. They already have a busy schedule and busy life going on to begin with. So, for them, to take the time off and start to do this office visit takes away time from them, so it affects the compliance. So, hopefully, more awareness and more recognition and encouraging each other to take a day off and just go to get screened might actually result in life saving. Also, I would like to say something important. Most of us, as physicians, when we see an older patient with rectal bleeding, for example, we always think about, OK, maybe he has colon cancer, maybe she has colon cancer. But we don't think the same way when we see a 25 year-old old bleed. So, I think, as a family doctor or somebody who is a medical doctor that will actually seeing that patient, the threshold should be lowered for symptoms and also for early referral. And the other thing I would like to encourage your viewer is that none of us would be excited and happy to talk to their loved one or their friend about his or her old habits as having their rear bleeding, abdominal colics, or so on, and so forth. But sometimes, those symptoms are the symptoms because of colon cancer. I always say, you know your bodies are best, so if you thinks there's something wrong, don't be embarrassed to talk about that. You have to share those symptoms with your family doctor, or at least your loved one to get an advice and get evaluated. And this gets complicated among minorities, because somehow there is a shame in this. And I think looking for safe environment, community network, as you mentioned at the beginning, easy access to medical care is crucial. You're not going to be able to get screened if you don't have the bus ticket to get to the center to be screened there. The last thing I would just like to stress also, if I may, most people think a screening is connected to colonoscopy, which is partially true, but colonoscopy is not the only way patients can get screened. There are many, many other ways that people can get screened including stool tests that you can do at home and send it to your doctor. So, colonoscopy is not the only way you can get screened. You can also discuss with your family doctor or even loved one about other means that you can get screened. Dr. John Sweetenham: Yeah, I think that's a really important point, and it raises another question actually, which may be difficult to answer in this specific age group. But I just wonder, in general terms, whether you can make any comments about how much ground do you think we may have lost during the pandemic in terms of delayed screening and delayed diagnosis. Are you are you seeing evidence of that in the literature or in your own practice and your own institution now? Dr. Mohamed Salem: I think that's a pretty important question. I would say yes to both. Last year, there was data showing that colorectal cancer cases declined. All of us know nothing had change. I mean, the cases are the same out there. It's just not been diagnosed yet because most hospitals obviously, including ours, and many, many other hospitals throughout the country were trying to survive the COVID-19 pandemic, and that got a lot of patients to be delayed for screening. Many patients didn't feel comfortable going to the hospital to get either their colonoscopy or even to the family doctor visit, and so on, and so forth. So, I think this delay in the detection of the cancer. The cancer did not didn't appear. It just was not detected yet. And the risk of that, as I mentioned earlier, the more time passed without intervention, if someone has a cancer, that means more advanced stage. It goes from stage I to II and III and IV with time, and with that, the survival and outcomes get worse. So, that also brings another point that we think, it's that younger patient has more aggressive disease. I think there is some data about that. But also, I wonder if is this really more aggressive disease or just delayed in diagnosis. When you go to your family doctor or even get it checked then they say they're having rectal bleeding. This could be, yes, because of hemorrhoid, but also, it could be because of colon cancer. And I'm not saying everyone with rectal bleeding has colon cancer, but I'm saying that could be one of the reasons. And I would say you really have to seek medical advice if you have symptoms because, again, early detection is the best part about this, and it really saves lives and it changes a lot of things. So, yes, it's a pandemic. It had definitely, no doubt, impact on the colorectal cancer care. And I would predict is that we're going to start seeing more and more patients with more advanced disease in the coming months and years. Dr. John Sweetenham: Yeah, that's an alarming prediction. Of course, taken in conjunction with the other prediction that we mentioned earlier from the study by Bailey et al., it really should give us cause for concern. And I think, maybe my final question to you would be, given what you've just said, plus those data in somewhat dire predictions for 2030, what do we need to do now to prevent that prediction from Bailey et al. from coming true, do you think, if there's anything we can do at this stage? Dr. Mohamed Salem: I think that's a very complex question. But I think, the way I think about this, every one of us, as an individual and organization and even in government and political entity, we really have a role to play. As an individual, I would say, as I mentioned before, you know your body well, so I always say this phrase, 'If you feel something, say something.' This could be a life changing behavior. So, if you feel like there's something wrong with you, please don't be embarrassed to share this. Talk to your family doctor, talk to your friend, and seek medical advice. As a community, we have to encourage each other to share this information, to teach each other certain habits that might help early detection. And if you are at risk, please go ahead and get screened. As I mentioned, colonoscopy is one mean, but there are many others. As an institution, I think raising awareness is important. I think providing easy access to care, that's also very important. And from the government and political entity, I think looking at those people with diversity and disparity, and people with no insurance, people who need special support and need to get help, I think we should have a community program out there. Some help out there, whether this comes through insurance, means, or other programs that we need to look at. And I think this might have some impact on our ability to detect this cancer early on. I always say, which, I think maybe some people might think is an exaggerated statement, but no one really should die from colorectal cancer. Because again, if you detect the cancer early, minimal care should take care of that. The problem happens when we don't detect it early and the patient presents with stage III or IV disease. Dr. John Sweetenham: Yeah, so it's kind of a multifaceted approach, everything from the personal right through to the political aspect is involved in what we all need to do to contribute to this. So, I really appreciate your time today and sharing your insights, and congratulations on the study, which, I think, highlighted actually not just one, but several really important issues in this kind of growing incidence of colorectal cancer and what appeared to be growing disparities as well. Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. I hope that you continue to make an impact on these disturbing trends in the years to come. Dr. Mohamed Salem: Thank you, Dr. Sweetenham, for having me, and it's a pleasure to be with you tonight. Dr. John Sweetenham: And thank you also to our listeners for your time today. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts.   Disclosures:  Dr. John Sweetenham: None disclosed.  Dr. Mohamed Salem: Consulting or Advisory Role: Taiho Pharmaceutical, Exelixis, Bristol-Myers Squibb Speakers' Bureau: Genentech/Roche, Taiho Pharmaceutical   Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.