Can't-Miss Highlights From ACG 2023: Part 2

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hello. I'm Dr David Johnson, professor of medicine and chief of gastroenterology at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia.

Welcome back to part 2 of this series featuring highlights from the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) 2023 annual meeting.

New Findings for Multitarget Stool Tests

I want to resume our overview with two studies looking at stool-based testing for colon cancer screening.

The first of these was presented by Dr David Lieberman from Oregon Health & Science University.^[1] He and his colleagues assessed a new multitarget stool RNA test called Colosense. They recruited approximately 8300 participants from 49 US states, so there was no demographic bias here.

The test was 94% sensitive for detection of colon cancer. Interestingly, it was 100% sensitive for early-stage (stage I) colon cancers, of which there were 12 cases. The sensitivity for detecting advanced adenomas was 45%, and 51% for advanced adenomas > 2 cm. The specificity overall for no findings was 87%.

It's interesting that the maintenance of sensitivity was observed across all the age groups. Investigators speculated that this was likely because the stool DNA — used in the current version of the Cologuard test — is subject to methylation. The methylation patterns may change with age and that may impact the sensitivity of detection, which is something that they didn't see in this particular study.