Researchers at Amsterdam University teaching hospital and in Cambridge have identified a new, more dangerous variant of colon cancer which has a much more likely chance of recurring.

The researchers looked at 1,200 cases of colon cancer and intentified three subtypes. Two have already been well-documented but a third subtype has ‘a very unfavourable prognosis’, the researchers said.

This third type, they say, would explain why the cancer comes back in one in five cases, even though the tumors have not spread and have been removed.

Colon cancer is diagnosed in nearly 13,000 people a year in the Netherlands and is one of the most common types of cancer in men.