Bowel cancer study aims to save 2,000 lives a year

Two thousand lives a year could be saved if patients with bowel cancer were given the best available treatment, scientists said yesterday.

In addition a genetic screen for bowel cancer which is the commonest killer after lung cancer could be available in three to five years.

Launching a package of new measures to combat a disease which kills nearly 20,000 British men and women a year Mr John Northover head of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund's Bowel Cancer Unit in London said that people were "literally dieing of embarrassment" because they do not go to their doctors soon enough.

"Bowel cancer of its very nature is an embarrassing subject and people tend to shy away from it,".he said. Mr Northover added that studies have shown awareness of bowel cancer in the population is very low although it kills 19,600 men and women a year and 15,200 men and 15,600 women a year are diagnosed.

"Lack of concern may be why the Government does not take a massive interest in it. It may be why in the Health of the Nation which gave targets for common cancers that bowel cancer did not figure once in the document."

However ther ICRF announced the start of the largest ever treatment trial which will involve 8,000 patients. They estimate that deaths could be reduced by 10 per cent.

Too little research has been conducted into the best treatment regimes said Richard Gray of the Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, the trial"s co-ordinator "Bowel cancer treatment was currently haphazard. In 50 per cent of cases doctors base treatment on opinion and not on scientific evidence," he said The new trial involving virtually every bowel cancer specialist in the country will provide the first soundly evidence on how best to treat the disease.

Meanwhile, the new gene therapy work involves the gene called ras which is known to signal early cell changes. Cells that line the bowel are shed in stools and these can be analysed for early genetic mutations. Ras changes are implicated in 50 per cent of bowel cancers.

The task is to simplify the process, to automate it, to cornfirm its reliability and to launch large scale trials.

The research fund yesterday published two booklets Completing the Jigsaw _ Getting to the bottom of bowel cancer, available from ICRF, Po Box 123, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PX.