A Patient-Friendly Colon Cancer Test?

If you’ve ever had a colonoscopy or a sigmoidoscopy, you can relate to the title of this blog. A blood test instead of a tube insertion would be infinitely preferable. But can a blood test be as good as a colonoscopy? A report at the Annual Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium being held this month may hold the answer. Available blood tests for colorectal cancer result in false positives in 60% to 90% of cases, meaning the patient has to have a colonoscopy for confirmation. The new test looks for a colon cancer-specific antigen called CCSA-2. Researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University of Pittsburgh found that only 20% of results were false positives, and only 9% of cancers went undetected.

This represents a great improvement over earlier blood tests. The test is made by Onconome, Inc. We’ll have to wait and see if the FDA will approve it (as they must review all diagnostic tests).