The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a blood test intended to detect colon cancer, a product many experts hope will help catch cases of the disease early enough so that they can be more easily treated.
The test, called Shield and made by Guardant Health, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based biotech firm, comes with a drawback: It is not as good as a colonoscopy and other tests at detecting precancerous or early stage cancers. But some experts have welcomed it as a way to approach another problem: As effective as colonoscopy is as both a way of finding cancer and removing lesions that could become cancer later on, many people are unwilling to undergo the procedure.
Colon cancer is the second-most diagnosed cancer in the U.S. and the second-leading cause of cancer death. But data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that not only do people frequently not get colonoscopies on schedule, but one in five eligible adults is never screened for colon cancer.
