Ángeles Cruz Martínez
La Jornada newspaper
Monday, October 6, 2025, p. 19
As a chronic degenerative disease, the expected thing is that cancer appears in people over 50 years of age, but occurs in increasingly young individuals, as evidenced in colon and rectum cancer, who represent one third of the cases in the country, said the specialists in Oncology, Claudia Arce of the National Cancer Institute (INCAN) and Ana Karen Valenzuela, of the South Medical Hospital.
They pointed out that the main risk factors for these and other malignant tumors are so-overweight, obesity, sedentation and poor food habits present since childhood.
The country lacks a vision focused on “primary prevention”; That is, in avoiding risk factors before the disease occurs, said Rafael Lozano, professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
The experts participated in the colloquium on cancer organized by the Mexican Foundation for Health and the Faculty of Medicine, where Lozano gave as an example of prevention the vaccination against the human papillomavirus, the main risk factor of cervical cancer. He affirmed that in the countries where the application of the biological is guaranteed, the tumor is in the process of disappearing, while in Latin America, Mexico included, and countries in Africa, it remains a reflection of inequality, since it affects the poorest.
Regarding colon and rectum cancer, Arce and Valenzuela caught attention to the absence of a national policy for timely detection and treatment of this malignant and lethal tumor (half of those affected die).
He commented that it is the third most frequent neoplasia in the country. In men it is the second cause of cancer death after the prostate and in women the fourth, behind the neoplasms of breast, cervicouterins and thyroid.
Based on international investigations and statistics, he indicated that in the next 15 years, colorectal cancer will increase 33 percent. The most serious is the affectation at an early age; 95 percent of cases begin with adenomatous polyps (bump within the intestine) that are benign and can be removed, but in most cases they are not detected, until they evolve to cancer.
