Colon

Carol Carr showed all the signs of colorectal cancer seven years ago, but doctors thought the 44-year-old Glen Burnie woman was too young to have the disease and never tested her for it. Instead, they said her diarrhea, vomiting, cramping, iron deficiency and extreme fatigue were more likely caused by the flu, anxiety and even a brain disorder. Treatments for those illnesses failed and Carr got so sick she had to stop working. When she finally saw a specialist who ordered a colonoscopy she was suffering from Stage II colorectal cancer.

A: My father was recently diagnosed with colon cancer at age 71. Does this increase my risk of developing colon cancer? Is there anything I can do to avoid getting it?Q: Like everyone else in this country, you have ample reason to worry about colon cancer, which is the second leading cause of cancer death among Americans; in 1993 there were 152,000 new cases and 57,000 deaths from colon cancer. On average, Americans have a 6 percent risk of developing colon cancer during their lifetime, and a 2.5 percent chance of dying from it. There has been no decrease in the frequency of colon cancer in recent years.

SO THERE I WAS, on hands and knees, crawling through a 40-foot long, four-foot-high, human colon. It wasn't a real colon, of course. No human has a colon that size, except maybe Marlon Brando, and I'm sure he has security people to prevent media access. No, this was a replica. It's called the Colossal Colon, and I'm not making it up. It was conceived of by a 26-year-old cancer survivor named Molly McMaster as a way to get people to talk about their colons. This is a topic that most people don't even like to think about.

Carol Carr's diagnosis of colorectal cancer at age 44 ("Colon cancer rises for young," July 30) underscores the point that even though current national guidelines for average risk individuals call for colon screening to start at age 50, there are important exceptions. Anyone experiencing symptoms like Ms. Carr's should talk to a gastroenterologist. African-Americans fall into a high-risk category and are another exception to the rule to start screening at age 50. The American College of Gastroenterology in its official screening guidelines recommends that African-Americans should start younger - at age 45 - because they face a higher incidence of colorectal cancer generally, have more cancers in the right side of the colon, as well as potentially more aggressive tumors.

BOSTON -- The Boston Celtics have called a news conference for this morning to announce that coach Chris Ford will undergo minor surgery to remove a polyp and will miss the team's forthcoming West Coast trip, sources told the Boston Globe last night.According to team sources, the polyp is located in the colon and is in a precancerous stage. It is not considered life-threatening, and if treated quickly Ford, 45, should enjoy a full recovery.

Aspirin, already shown to protect against heart disease and stroke, may also protect against colon cancer.Patients who took aspirin at least four times a week for at least three months were half as likely to develop colon cancer as were patients who did not take aspirin, according to Dr. Lynn Rosenberg of the School of Public Health at the Boston University School of Medicine.The exact amount of aspirin taken was not known, Dr. Rosenberg said.The 11-year study compared 1,326 colon cancer patients with 4,891 patients who had other types of cancer or no cancer at all.The study was reported in the March 6 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Faced with an array of intractable health problems that are prematurely killing Baltimore's residents, city leaders plan to unveil Tuesday an ambitious plan targeting HIV infection, heart disease and other serious ailments in the top 10. Health officials will for the first time map out specific and comprehensive goals, such as reducing smoking rates by 20 percent and the number of obese adults by 15 percent — all by 2015. The effort goes beyond the Health Department to engage just about every community in Baltimore, including hospitals, neighborhood associations, businesses and faith organizations.

Adding to a rapidly emerging picture about colon cancer, an international team of scientists has discovered a second gene that causes what might be the most common of all inherited diseases.People who carry the gene -- or another one identified late last year -- are born with almost certain odds of developing colon cancer. Together, the genes are believed to cause 90 percent of all cases of inherited colon cancer, a disease that strikes one out of 200 people in the United States.The discovery, reported in this week's issue of Science, was made by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center; Human Genome Sciences Inc. in Gaithersburg; the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville; the University of Helsinki, Finland; and Creighton University in Omaha, Neb.Dr.

BETHESDA -- Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center have identified a genetic defect responsible for an inherited form of colon cancer and will soon test people to see if they are carriers.The test, which should be available at Hopkins and selected research centers across the country within six months, could bring important news to people whose families have been wracked by the disease.Carriers run almost certain odds of developing the disease. But those who know they inherited the gene could monitor their health for signs of a developing cancer in time to avoid fatal complications.

ARIQUEMES, Brazil -- Fifteen years ago, Maria Luisa de Oliveira Dias hiked down a jungle trail to claim a 250-acre wood lot under an ambitious plan to colonize the Amazon.Today, she wishes she had never left her home in southern Brazil. Plantings of corn and rice withered in the sandy soil. Rubber trees never produced latex. And coffee prices are so low that income this year for her family of four adults will be less than $1,000.A decade after the World Bank helped pave a road through a stretch of wilderness that became Rondonia state, Brazil's most ambitious Amazon colonization plan has failed.