Thread: Why is osteosarcoma more common in small children and Colon cancer is more common in the elderly?

Why doesn't osteosarcoma increase with age like Colon cancer?

I just going to guess at this since no one has answered this. Bone development is greatest before they reach full size and so on. So it might allow for more rapid development in stray or cancerous cell growth.

There is rapid turn out of bone growing cells in little children. One important principle of cancer is that the oncogenic potential of any cell incease by a geometric progression provided there is a rapid cell turn over. The continuous cellular differntiaion may be the reason to explain why osteosarcoma is commoner in children.

Cancers develop as a result of a cascade of alterations in the DNA of the cell that result in it no longer responding to the normal controls on cell growth. Some of these are inherited, some develop during the course of time, or as a result of environmental insults.
Ewing's sarcoma (the one type of osteosarcoma most common in children) is more of a genetic disease that colon cancer. While colon cancer does have a genetic predisposition, it doesn't develop without several other genetic 'hits' damaging the DNA.

FWIW,
Clarssa

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Thank you everyone for your responses.