If caught early, nearly all cases of colon cancer are curable. However, colon cancer screening suffers from a combination of low compliance rates and over-diagnosis.
Now a group of University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists has identified four protein markers associated with the pre-cancerous forms of colon cancer that are most likely to develop into disease.
They claim that their findings will ultimately lead to a blood test for the cancer, adding a method to help increase screening rates while reducing over-treatment.
Senior author Bill Dove said: “This study is the first peek at the possibility that there will be blood markers for a minimally-invasive procedure that can reduce over-diagnosis. They do exist.”
He continued: “There’s good evidence they’re being conserved in early disease in humans.
“We didn’t expect we could find blood markers for such small, early, pre-malignant polyps in humans, but we did.”
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