With colorectal cancer case numbers rising among younger and middle-aged adults, doctors have been warning of the importance of early screening and detection to prevent deaths from the disease.

According to researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Umeå University in Sweden, timely screening could cut colon cancer deaths by up to 43% – a revised estimate arrived at after they looked at 14 years of medical data from Stockholm.

“A previous evaluation of the programme showed that those who received an invitation to screening had a 14% lower risk of dying from the disease,” said study lead author and Karolinska Institutet associate professor Dr Johannes Blom, whose team looked at data for around 376,000 people.

“Mortality is significantly lower than that among those who actually take part in the screening,” he said.

Although colorectal cancer is among the most common forms of cancer, it has a “favourable prognosis if detected early”, the Karolinska Institutet said in a statement about the research, published in JAMA Network Open, an American Medical Association journal.

But at the same time, many people opt not to be checked – even when free universal screening is offered, such as in Sweden, where around one in three people skip the procedure.

“Our study highlights the importance of taking part in colorectal cancer screening and shows that it can actually save lives,” Assoc Prof Blom said.

In July (2026), medical researchers at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in Britain released findings showing how colon cancer has developed resistance to chemotherapy.

The disease is becoming increasingly common across all age groups, with the journal Annals of Oncology and the American Cancer Society publishing papers in early 2024 outlining rising European and North American caseloads of people between 25 and 49 years of age. – dpa

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