For how we live.
Computer-aided detection lifts polyp pickup in ordinary screening. In 757 patients having surveillance for an inherited cancer syndrome, a randomised trial could not show the same gain.
In the Scandinavian phase 3 ASAC trial, daily aspirin failed to improve disease-free survival after treatment of colorectal cancer liver metastases — and overall survival was worse on the drug.
SOLARIS, a publicly funded phase 3 trial, tested vitamin D3 added to chemotherapy after a promising phase 2 signal. Progression-free survival was 11.8 versus 10.3 months — not a significant difference.
In the publicly funded EPoS II trial, waiting five years before the next colonoscopy was no worse than the recommended three at an interim look, with near-identical cancer rates. Ten-year data are still to come.
No long-term trial has tested an all-meat diet. The best direct data is a self-reported survey where people felt better but ran markedly high LDL cholesterol — the signal that should give pause.
A pooled study of 1.44 million adults links activity to lower risk of 13 cancers — but not all, and not melanoma. A 2025 randomised trial now shows exercise after colon cancer improves survival.
Most bowel symptoms are not cancer. But a 2023 study of early-onset cases identified four signs — rectal bleeding, abdominal pain, diarrhoea and iron-deficiency anaemia — that recur before diagnosis in the under-50s.
EPoS II randomised 10,799 people with high-risk adenomas to a first surveillance colonoscopy at five years or three. At an interim analysis the colorectal-cancer rates were near-identical.
High-heat cooking makes compounds that damage DNA in the lab — heterocyclic amines, PAHs and acrylamide. The catch is that human diet studies have mostly failed to find a consistent cancer link.
Inviting people to a single colonoscopy cut 10-year colorectal cancer risk from 1.20% to 0.98%. The reduction in cancer deaths did not reach significance — and only 42% of those invited turned up.
A cohort of 5.24 million UK adults linked higher BMI to 17 of 22 cancers — strongly for the uterus, weakly or not at all for others, and inversely for a couple. The pattern is specific, not uniform.
New at-home molecular tests catch most established colorectal cancers, but find only 13–43% of the advanced precancerous polyps a colonoscopy is meant to remove before they become cancer.
A Polish study found endoscopists' unaided polyp-detection fell after AI arrived. A Norwegian trial that tracked doctors before, during and after AI use found no such deskilling.
Animal studies show plastic particles disturbing the gut and triggering inflammation. Human evidence is mostly detection, with cause and effect still unresolved.
A tyre-wear chemical that kills coho salmon at trace levels is now measured in most people's urine. What that means for human health is only beginning to be studied.
A, B, C, D and I are not school marks. They encode how strong the evidence is, whether to screen at all — and in the US, whether insurance has to pay for it.
A Danish stepped-wedge trial gave endoscopists automated feedback on their technique after every procedure. Adenoma detection rose from 43.4% to 48.6% — a different tool from real-time polyp AI.
A blood test after surgery can detect tumour DNA too faint to see on a scan. In one trial it let colon-cancer patients safely skip chemotherapy — but the evidence is still narrow.
A stool test at home and a colonoscopy are both recommended options with different trade-offs. The starting age fell to 45 because the disease is rising in younger adults.
A Lancet series covering 135 million person-years found the largest risk reductions in that range. Trials of isolated fibre supplements produce much smaller effects on much narrower outcomes.
US guidance recommends mammography from 40. A Canadian review of the same randomised evidence put the benefit at 0.27 fewer breast cancer deaths per 1,000 women aged 40-49 over ten years.
A 2025 US Surgeon General advisory put alcohol third among preventable causes of cancer. The global data show light drinking contributes too, not only heavy use.
IARC put bacon in the same category as tobacco in 2015, which says how sure scientists are, not how dangerous it is. The attributable-death figures are three orders of magnitude apart.
Nous-209 targets 209 mutations shared across a whole class of tumours, so it can be manufactured in advance. What the trial has not yet shown is that anyone got less cancer.
A linked-registry cohort of New South Wales residents from 2001 to 2018 finds cancer risk in people with intellectual disability inverts with age — higher when young, lower after 50.
In the phase 3 ATOMIC trial, atezolizumab on top of standard FOLFOX chemotherapy raised three-year disease-free survival to 86.3% from 76.2% after surgery for stage III dMMR colon cancer.
SCREESCO randomised Swedish 60-year-olds to colonoscopy, stool testing, or nothing. After a median 4.8 years, overall cancer incidence barely moved; the stage distribution did.
The EAGLE trial ran colonoscopy AI off-site over a network and aimed it at the lesions that matter. It reports a threefold gain in serrated lesions — in a field whose main US guideline recommends nothing.
A 13-year-old observational hypothesis finally got its randomised test. In ALASCCA, 160 mg of daily aspirin cut three-year recurrence from 14.1% to 7.7% in biomarker-selected patients.
Over 17.4 years, high ultra-processed food intake was linked to a 24% higher colorectal cancer risk overall — and a 58% higher risk for right-sided colon cancer specifically.