Mayo Clinic reports new findings on noninvasive test for pancreatic cancer
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - 10:01
in Health & Medicine
Pancreatic cancer has one of the highest mortality rates of any of the major cancers, and of the 43,000-plus Americans diagnosed with the disease each year, more than 94 percent die within five years of diagnosis. One reason for this high number of deaths is a lack of effective screening tools for catching the disease early. Now, in an effort to try to gain the upper hand on this deadly form of cancer, Mayo Clinic researchers believe they have found a new way to test for pancreatic cancer with DNA testing of patients' stool samples. The research was presented at the 2011 Digestive Disease Week conference, held May 7 in Chicago.