Study confirms effectiveness of liquid blood biopsy test for detecting colon cancer

The study, conducted by researchers at Hospital Del Mar in Barcelona, ​​confirmed the effectiveness of a liquid blood biopsy test for detecting colon cancer, which has “comparable performance” to current methods for diagnosing it, the center said in a statement on Tuesday. The journal Annals of Oncology published the results of the work, which analyzed 623 blood samples, of which 318 corresponded to people who had a colonoscopy between 2017 and 2018 after testing positive for stool occult blood. colon cancer screening program.

The remaining samples are from people who have been diagnosed with colon cancer, and they all underwent this test, which looks for DNA from a tumor in the colon, using different strategies at the same time: it analyzes the presence of DNA mutations, methylation, and also as fragmentomics, i.e. tumor-related changes, expanding the range of possible markers.

By analyzing multiple markers, they can increase sensitivity in detecting circulating tumor DNA, which in the very early stages of a tumor may be present very little in blood samples and thus can detect cancer at very early stages. The researchers observed that this test had similar sensitivity to a test used in population screening in Catalonia, which is the fecal occult blood test, a test based on the detection of traces of blood in the stool.

Both are detected in more than 80% of cases, while their effectiveness against precancerous lesions, precancerous polyps, falls to one in four cases. The authors hope that this new type of test will increase citizen participation in the screening program.