A study, published in Digestive Diseases and Sciences, analyzed the efficacy of Medial EarlySign's ColonFlag.
Mark Hornbrook, PhD, senior investigator emeritus at Portland, Ore.-based Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, and colleagues identified and reviewed 900 eligible colorectal cancer cases with blood counts before diagnosis from the tumor registry. Researchers selected 9,108 control patients with no cancers.
Researchers selected one blood count as the pseudo-colorectal cancer and assigned a "calendar year" on the count date. For each calendar year, researchers selected 18 controls to match the general enrollment and lengths of continuous enrollment.
Researchers measured for prediction performance, specificity and odds ratios.
Here's what you should know:
1. Area under the receiver operating characteristics curve was 0.80 ± 0.01 for detecting colorectal cancer.
2. Researchers determined the odds ratio for a high-risk detection score for colorectal cancer was 34.7.
3. ColonFlag had a high degree of accuracy identifying right-sided colorectal cancers.
Researchers concluded, "ColonFlag identifies individuals with 10-fold higher risk of undiagnosed colorectal cancer at curable stages (0/I/II), flags colorectal tumors 180–360 days prior to usual clinical diagnosis, and is more accurate at identifying right-sided (compared to left-sided) colorectal cancers."
This was the Medial EarlySign's first U.S.-based clinical data study of ColonFlag.