Doctors may soon check stool samples for evidence of cancer

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 16 Apr 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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Doctors could soon check your stool samples to see whether you have cancer. They will be able to identify colorectal cancer. Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers in the developed world.

At the moment, the only way of finding out whether a patient has colorectal cancer is by means of uncomfortable invasive procedures (for the patient).

Scientists have been able to find signs in the DNA of stools that can help them identify cancer. You can read about their research in the journal The Lancet.

The scientists, from the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria, were able to single out patients with colorectal cancer by studying the chemical changes to DNA in their stools.

They looked at a gene called SFRP2. In patients with colorectal cancer, they noticed that this gene was more likely to have undergone a chemical process - this process is called methylation.

Head of the research team, Martin Winschwendter said "To our knowledge, SFRP2 methylation represents one of the most sensitive markers for identifying colorectal cancer in stool samples."

He said further research was needed to see how far back into the early stages of the cancer they could go before detection was not possible by this means.

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