Stool test detects digestive tract cancers

A newly developed stool test has been found a useful tool in detecting digestive tract cancers including colon, stomach, pancreatic, bile duct and esophageal tumors. Despite the high recovery rate of gastrointestinal cancers diagnosed in early-stages, screening tests are only routinely performed for colon cancer. The majority of these tumors, therefore, remain undiagnosed until the late stages of the disease when they are not treatable. "What's common to all of the cancers in the GI tract is that they shed cells and they are going downstream and are excreted in the stool. We've exploited that common biology to explore this as a screening approach," said David Ahlquist, the leader of the research team. He stressed that the new test can detect DNA changes that are cancer-specific, diagnosing nearly 70 percent of assorted digestive tract cancers. The expanded version of the stool DNA test is reported to detect cancers at each organ site, including 65 percent of esophageal cancers, 62 percent of pancreatic cancers, and 75 percent of bile duct and gallbladder cancers. The stool test can also detect 100 percent of stomach and colorectal cancers as well as precancerous polyps. Mayo Clinic researchers concluded that the noninvasive screening test can identify both early- and late-stage gastrointestinal cancers.