Colorectal Cancer in Egypt

Abstract

Colorectal cancer in Egypt has no age predilection and more than one-third of tumors affects a young population. The high prevalence in young people can neither be explained on a hereditary basis nor can it be attributed to bilharziasis. The disease usually presents at an advanced stage, and predisposing adenomas are rare. Similarity of the data from different centers suggests that this is the picture of colorectal cancer typical of Egypt.

Colorectal cancer in the young, many questions, few answers

“…Studies have reported a high young cancer prevalence of 38% in Egypt [7] , 18% in Turkey [8] , 39% in India [9] , 29% in Nepal [10] , 23% from Saudi Arabia [11] , 19.7% from Sri Lanka [12] , 52% from a single institution in Pakistan [13] and 10.1% from Taiwan [14] . Most significantly, a recent study from the United States [19] , where the authors evaluated the records of 393241 patients over a 15-years period, revealed an overall decline in CRC by 0.92% -the effect attributed to screening.…”

“…CRC is a disease of developed nations, and screening by faecal occult blood testing and colonoscopy has stemmed its incidence in those over 50 years [6] . By contrast, CRC in the young, was a disease prevalent in the developing world [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] compared with Australia, New Zealand and the West, where its prevalence in young individuals was low [11,15,16] . However, more recently, there has been an increase in the number of reports of CRC in the young from the developed world [17][18][19] .…”

Genetic variants in germline TP53 and MDM2 SNP309 are not associated with early onset colorectal cancer

“…Another unexplained characteristic of early onset CRC is aggressive biological behavior. Advanced stage at presentation, high grade histology, and poor prognosis are features of early onset CRC that have been reported in case series from around the world [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Taken together, these data strongly suggest that among these patients are one or more undiscovered genetic syndromes.…”

Screening of BRCA1 Mutations Using C-terminal Antibody in Sporadic non Familial Colonic Carcinoma

“…This finding was almost similar to the results of the national cancer instituteEgypt (NCI) in the last statistical study in 2007 [13], and Elgharbeia registry in 2007 [14], which came in contrast to what was obtained by Khafagy et al [1] who noticed that most of the colonic carcinomas in Egypt and other developing countries occurred in young population with the mean age 45 years. In 2002, Abou Zeid et al [15] recorded that no age predilection could be observed and that more than one third of the affected patients were of the young population.…”