Over the past few years, our group has studied the role of diet and lifestyle factors, in conjunction with host immune factors and the gut microbiota, in colorectal cancer development and survivorship. Much of the work is based on three large prospective cohort studies, the Nurses’ Health Study I and II, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, in which diet, lifestyle and colorectal cancer diagnosis and mortality have been assessed…
While substantial advances have been made in epidemiology to identify environmental and genetic risk factors, this knowledge has not yet been effectively translated into the clinic for better patient care. A particular example is the age-based or “one-size-fits-all” colonoscopy screening approach that does not take into account the individual variation in colorectal cancer risk. Similar issue occurs to colonoscopy surveillance after polypectomy, where histopathologic features of polyps that are being…