Working Towards a “Dipstick” Test for Bladder Cancer

How would bladder cancer be diagnosed? A battery of screenings that often include cytoscopy – a painful procedure that uses a small camera threaded through the urethra to image the bladder’s interior.

What if you only have an infection after all? Then the battery of tests were not only a waste of time and money, but also invasively unnecessary.

This is why scientists are working towards the development of a “dipstick” test that would easily single out patients with tumor in their bladders against those who only have infections. Also, a dipstick or a urine test will not only be non-invasive but will also have the potential to detect cancer better and for monitoring bladder cancer through time.

Such a dipstick test is what researchers at the University of Florida with their colleagues at the University of Michigan are working on.

”…the scientists used advances in technology to isolate nearly 200 proteins from the urine of patients with and without bladder cancer. Several appear promising as potential biomarkers, including one that studies conducted elsewhere have already linked to liver and ovarian cancer.”

According to Steve Goodison, an associate professor of surgery at the UF College of Medicine-Jacksonville:

“With any cancer, the earlier you find it the better because it’s not as aggressive in its early stages, and of course it’s much easier to remove any cancer anywhere in the body if you catch it while it’s relatively small.

What would really help in this disease would be a test you could use to monitor these patients just by monitoring their urine. If we could develop this test to try to narrow down those who’ve got infections versus something more serious, that would relieve the patient from pain and worry and (cut health-care costs).

The final aim would be to make a test cheap and convenient enough that you can start to think of screening people who don’t have any symptoms.”

Find more details from the full report.