VIDEO: Dietary modification ‘puts power in our hands’ to reduce risk for early-onset CRC
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In Healio video exclusive, Suneel Kamath, MD, reports a diet, especially one high in red and processed meats may be linked to an increased risk for early-onset colorectal cancer.
“What we’ve been seeing in clinic for the last several decades is that there’s been a significant rise in the number of younger people being diagnosed with colorectal cancer,” Kamath, assistant professor of medicine and GI medical oncologist at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, told Healio. “The key question here is how can we identify these patients earlier or maybe even prevent this from ever happening.”
In a retrospective study, Kamath and colleagues used plasma metabolomic and microbiome data from 64 patients with stage I to IV CRC, who were categorized as early-onset or average-onset, and developed an AI algorithm to identify associations specific for early-onset CRC.
According to Kamath, they found “a major overabundance” of metabolites related to protein and amino acid metabolism, such as arginine biosynthesis and the urea cycle, among those with early-onset CRC, which may be linked to the long-term consumption of red and processed meats. The researchers also found “some associations” between artificial sweeteners such as Xylitol and erythritol, he added.
“We have known about reducing red meat and processed food in our diets as a way to reduce cancer risk, and I think we really need to double down on educating patients about that,” Kamath told Healio. “We’re starting to see that it not only can affect you later in life, but it can actually affect you much earlier in your 20s and 30s.”
He added, “The good thing with all these is they are all dietary things — they’re all things that we actively choose to take in. That puts power in our hands and in our patients’ hands to be able to modify what they do.”
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