Dear Editor:

We read with interest the article clinicopathological characteristics of colorectal cancer presenting under the age of 50 by Jones et al. [1] published online in the International Journal of Colorectal Disease. The authors analyzed the characteristics of colorectal cancer in a cohort under the age of 50. They have found that the poor differention of colorectal tumor was higher in the young patients without any effect on 5-year overall survival. Also, they have stated that the majority of colorectal cancers presenting under the age of 50 were sporadic. We notice that explanation regarding some details of the patient population would be beneficial.

Although the study showed the clinicopathological features of the colorectal tumors, the evaluation of major risk factors related with the patients demographic would be meaningful. As it is known, the major risk factors for the colorectal cancers are family history, inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, obesity, red meat consumption, processed meat consumption, smoking, and alcohol. These risk factors have relative risk between 1.2 and 4 for the colorectal cancer [2–5]. As the authors mention some of them in the introduction, the study did not focus on them. However, we consider that knowledge of these risk factors and correlation with clinicopathological characteristics in the patient population would be interesting to the readers.