Home urine test spots bladder cancer early

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A simple test for blood in the urine, which is performed at home, can lead to the early detection of bladder cancer, and may reduce death from the disease, according to a new study.

"Bladder cancer is the sixth most common noncutaneous malignancy in the United States with more than 63,000 new diagnoses in 2005," Dr. Edward M. Messing, of the University of Rochester, New York, and colleagues point out in the journal Cancer.

The test involves a chemical strip that changes color when placed in urine containing blood. While the test misses very few bladder cancers, it may also pick up diseases other than cancer that can cause blood in the urine, such as kidney stones.

Messing and colleagues investigated whether bladder cancer screening in healthy men could result in earlier detection of the disease and reduced mortality compared with men who were unscreened.

Of 3515 men at least 50 years of age who were solicited from well-patient clinic rosters in and around Madison, Wisconsin, 1575 men participated in the study. The men tested their urine repetitively.

Over the course of the 19-year study, 258 (16.4 percent) men were evaluated for blood in urine, what doctors call "hematuria" and 21 of them (8.1 percent) were diagnosed with bladder cancer.

The team compared cancer grades and stages and outcomes among men with bladder cancer detected by screening with that of 509 men with newly diagnosed bladder cancer who were reported to the Wisconsin Tumor Registry.

Similar proportions of men with aggressive bladder cancers were noted in each group. However, just 10 percent of the aggressive cancers in the screen-detected group actually invaded the bladder wall compared with 60 percent in the unscreened group, a significant difference.

None of the men with screen-detected bladder cancer had died at 14 years follow-up, whereas 20 percent of men with unscreened bladder cancer had died from the disease.

The team concludes that home urine testing is a sensitive means of detecting bladder cancers, and "appears to improve survival from bladder cancer."

SOURCE: Cancer, November 1, 2006.