• Posted October 31, 2025

Gut Disorder Associated With Aging Occurring More Often In Younger Adults

Younger adults are developing a severe gut disorder at increasing rates, according to a new study.

There’s been a troubling surge in severe diverticulitis among Americans younger than 50, researchers from UCLA and Vanderbilt University recently reported.

They found that the proportion of patients younger than 50 admitted to the hospital with severe diverticulitis increased by more than half, rising from just under 19% in 2005 to more than 28% in 2020.

"We're seeing a significant shift in who is being hospitalized for severe diverticulitis," said lead researcher Shineui Kim, a fourth-year medical student at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

"This condition was traditionally thought of as a disease of older adults, but our data shows that younger Americans are increasingly affected, and often with more complicated presentations,” Kim said in a news release.

Diverticulitis involves small pouches that form at weak spots along the wall of the colon. In severe cases, these pouches can become infected or torn, resulting in potentially life-threatening complications.

For the new study, researchers analyzed records of more than 5.2 million hospitalizations in the U.S.

Of these patients, about 16% were “early-onset” cases occurring in people younger than 50. The number of these cases that involved severe diverticulitis rose by 52% during the study period.

However, treatment strategies also have evolved.

The proportion of younger patients requiring surgical removal of part of the colon to treat their diverticulitis dropped from nearly 35% to around 20%, showing that doctors are successfully using more conservative approaches to treat serious cases, Kim said.

The study found that younger diverticulitis patients tended to die less often and have shorter hospital stays and lower hospitalization costs compared to older patients.

However, they also were more likely to require complicated procedures, with 29% higher odds of needing to remove part of the colon and 58% higher odds of requiring abscess drainage, researchers found.

"While younger patients generally have better survival outcomes and shorter hospitalizations, they're paradoxically more likely to need invasive interventions," Kim said. "This suggests their disease may be more aggressive or that treatment approaches differ based on patient age and overall health status."

It’s not clear why more younger adults are developing diverticulitis, but researchers noted the trend dovetails with an increased risk of colon cancer among this age group.

"Little is known about why we're seeing this increase in younger patients," Kim said. "We urgently need additional research to determine what's driving these trends whether it's dietary factors, lifestyle changes, obesity rates or other environmental influences."

People can lower their risk of diverticulitis by increasing the amount of fiber in their diet. Only surgery can remove pouches that have already developed in the colon, according to Harvard Medical School

The new study appears in the journal Diseases in the Colon & Rectum.

More information

Harvard Medical School has more on diverticulitis.

SOURCE: UCLA, news release, Oct. 24, 2025