• Posted July 21, 2025

GI Cancers On The Rise Among Younger Adults

GI cancers among people 50 and younger are rising at an alarming rate, increasing in the U.S. faster than any other type of early onset cancer, according to a pair of new studies.

Cancers of the colon, stomach and esophagus have all increased in recent years, threatening the health of younger Americans, researchers say.

Between 2010 and 2019, cases of young-onset GI cancers rose by nearly 15%, researchers reported in the British Journal of Surgery.

“Colorectal cancer is the most common early onset GI cancer worldwide, accounting for more than half of the cases, but it is not the only GI cancer that is rising in younger adults,” said senior researcher Dr. Kimmie Ng, director of the Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

“Unfortunately, pancreatic, gastric, and esophageal cancers are also increasing in young people,” she said in a news release. “The rising incidence of early onset GI cancers is alarming and underscores the need for enhanced prevention strategies and early detection methods.”

GI cancer cases are highest among those 40 to 49, but the rise in rates is progressively steeper among younger groups, researchers said.

For example, young adults born in 1990 are twice as likely to develop colon cancer and four times as likely to develop rectal cancer as those born in 1950, the study says.

The team also pointed to recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that indicated colon cancer rates had more than tripled among 15- to 19-year-olds and nearly doubled among young adults aged 20 to 24.

Unfortunately, expanded colon cancer screening guidelines to include younger adults haven’t been widely embraced, researchers noted in a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The new recommendations extend colon cancer screening to healthy people as young as 45, but only about 1 in 5 U.S. adults 45 to 49 years of age were screened in 2021, researchers noted.

“Screening adherence is absolutely critical,” lead researcher Dr. Thejus Jayakrishnan, a medical oncologist with Dana-Farber, said in a news release.

“We have strong evidence that colorectal cancer screening saves lives by reducing both the number of people who develop colorectal cancer and the number of people who die from it,” he said. “Each missed screening is a lost opportunity to detect cancer early when it is more treatable, or to prevent cancer altogether by identifying and removing precancerous polyps."

The JAMA study reported a rise in several early-onset GI cancers between 2018 and 2022, particularly among women:

• Colon cancers increased 5% a year on average for women and 3.5% for men.

• Esophageal cancers increased nearly 6% a year for women and 1% for men.

• Stomach cancers increased about 4% a year for women and under 3% for men.

• Small intestine cancers increased 3.5% for women and under 3% for men.

Meanwhile, the British Journal of Surgery report noted that Black, Hispanic and Native American people are disproportionately affected by the increase in GI cancers.

Risk factors for GI cancer include obesity, a high-fat Western-style diet, fatty liver disease, smoking and alcohol use, researchers said.

Younger patients typically present with more aggressive cancers and need more intensive treatment than older patients, researchers wrote. They tend to have similar or shorter survival rates.

“Taken together, these two reviews are a call to action for further research on why rates of GI cancers are increasing in younger adults,” Ng said.

“There is currently limited data available, especially in pancreatic, gastric, and esophageal cancer,” she continued. “This comprehensive look at what data exist can help raise education and awareness, which is important because as a collective group, digestive system cancers account for a significant proportion of cancer-related deaths in younger adults in the U.S. and around the world.”

More information

Yale Medicine has more on GI cancers.

SOURCES: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, news release, July 17, 2025; British Journal of Surgery, July 8, 2025; Journal of the American Medical Association, July 8, 2025