Evaluation of Interventions Intended to Increase Colorectal Cancer Screening Rates in the United States: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Dougherty et al.
The finding, in our words
A systematic review and meta-analysis of interventions to raise colorectal cancer screening participation, including mailed outreach of home collection kits.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
Non-invasive self-sampling of anal colorectal mucus following defecation provides a patient-acceptable alternative to traditional stool collection for diagnosing colorectal cancer and inflammatory bowel disease. This emerging approach allows reliable measurement of diagnostic biomarkers to improve screening compliance.
This pilot study found that a self-administered anal swabbing technique for collecting colorectal mucus was rated as acceptable by 96% of participants and yielded samples suitable for cytology and protein analysis. The method successfully detected elevated mucin 2 levels in patients with inflammatory bowel disease, indicating its potential for non-invasive screening.
This pilot study found that mailing self-collection kits to endometrial cancer survivors was feasible and acceptable, whilst also observing that chemotherapy or radiation reduced beneficial vaginal bacteria compared to surgery alone.
This review establishes that microsampling across blood, saliva, urine and stool matrices offers validated workflows and regulatory recognition for human biomonitoring comparable to conventional methods. It finds that these decentralised approaches enhance participant acceptability and enable screening in remote or low-resource settings.
In a one-week virtual home clinic with 134 participants, 86 per cent returned saliva and 84 per cent returned stool, and most components were feasible and acceptable despite device and logistical challenges. This supports decentralised, patient-centric self-collection of non-blood biospecimens for research.