Medical News Summary: Fecal DNA test more effective than standard test for detecting colorectal cancer

About: Fecal DNA test more effective than standard test for detecting colorectal cancer
Date: 23 December 2004
Source: Reuters Health
Author: Megan Rauscher
Medical News Summary (summary of medical news story as reported by Reuters Health): A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine was done to compare the effectiveness of a variety of colorectal cancer detection methods compared to a new method. It was found that the new fecal DNA test (detects mutated tumor DNA in feces) detected slightly more than half of all invasive colorectal cancers and was better than the Hemoccult II which is the current standard non-invasive screening test (detected only about 13% of cancers). The fecal DNA test was also showed double the sensitivity of the Hemoccult II test for pre-cancerous tumor detection. The biggest drawback of this new testing method is the price which is at least 20 times more expensive.
URL: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=571&ncid=751&e=5&u=/nm/20041223/hl_nm/dna_cancer_dc
Related Disease Topics: Colorectal cancer, Cancer

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Related Medical News Channels: This medical news summary article refers to the following medical channel categories:

• Research
• research and colorectal cancer
• research and cancer
• Diagnosis
• Diagnosis and colorectal cancer
• Diagnosis and cancer

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