Research Highlights

• Subject Category:
  • Clinical medicine

Published online: 10 October 2007 | doi:10.1038/nchina.2007.212

Colon cancer : The link with heart disease

John Fox

Introduction

© istockphoto.com/eraxion, Sebastian Kaulitzki

Colon cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide, and coronary artery disease (CAD), which can lead to a heart attack, is the leading cause of death in most industrialized countries. Colon cancer and CAD are known to share similar risk factors, suggesting that the two diseases may be connected. Annie On On Chan at the University of Hong Kong and co-workers¹ investigated the likelihood of developing colon cancer in patients with CAD in an attempt to draw a link between the two diseases.

They recruited 706 patients in Hong Kong, with an average age in the early 60s, for colon screening after undergoing coronary angiography (a type of heart X-ray) for suspected CAD. Patients who tested CAD positive or negative were then compared with controls from the general population. For the three respective groups, the probabilities of developing colon neoplasm (the first stage before cancer) were 34.0%, 18.8% and 20.8%; advanced lesions (second stage before cancer) were 18.4%, 8.7% and 5.8%; and colon cancer were 4.4%, 0.5% and 1.4%. After adjusting for age and sex, the likelihood of developing colon cancer and advanced lesions was still found to be much higher for CAD-positive patients.

In addition, the researchers found that a number of risk factors for heart disease — such as a history of smoking and metabolic syndrome, which includes high blood pressure, obesity, high cholesterol and insulin resistance — also increase the risk of colon cancer.

The authors of this work are from:
Department of Medicine and Department of Statistics and Actuarial Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; Department of Medicine, Ruttonjee Hospital, Hong Kong, China; Department of Medicine, Tuen Mun Hospital, Hong Kong, China; Department of Biostatistics, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.

Reference

1. Chan, A. O. O. et al. Prevalence of colorectal neoplasm among patients with newly diagnosed coronary artery disease. JAMA 298, 1412–1419 (2007). | Article | PubMed |