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To foster screening, new colon cancer tests emphasize convenience

Nature Medicine volume 20, pages 322–323 (2014)Cite this article

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MADISON, WISCONSIN — Colon cancer screening saves lives. Yet the most common screening strategy, colonoscopy, requires people to eschew solid foods the day before and down a jug of gag-inducing laxative that keeps them racing to the toilet. No surprise, then, that more than a third of all eligible adults in the US still forgo routine testing, resulting in as many as 44,000 deaths each year that could have been avoided. Two companies developing new noninvasive tests hope to shrink that statistic.

Neither test is meant to replace colonoscopy, a procedure that allows doctors to spot tumors and precancerous polyps. But these alternatives—an at-home stool test and a lab-analyzed blood test—may be attractive to people who dread the procedure. As Nature Medicine went to press, a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee was scheduled to discuss the safety and effectiveness of these new diagnostics over two days in late March. Even if they receive the committee's support, however, it remains to be seen how these tests might fit into the menu of screening options already available.

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  1. Cassandra Willyard
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Willyard, C. To foster screening, new colon cancer tests emphasize convenience. Nat Med 20, 322–323 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0414-322

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