One of the most visible and disturbing symtoms is finding blood in your stools.
Blood can be darker or bright red or mixed in the stools or maybe mixed witb mucus.
Causes of blood in the stools?
Bowel Cancer or polyps of the colon,Hemorrhoids,Anal fissures,Ulcerative colitis,Crohn's disease,Diverticular disease, Meckel’s diverticulum
How to test for blood in the stools?
Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) detects hidden blood in the stool which may indicate bowel cancer and can also be from more benign causes like Piles
What happens if bowel cancer has no symptoms? ie no Bleeding in the stools?
Thankfully Coloalert test further parameters
Mutated KRAS gene in the stool that is found in Bowel cancer and is related to poor survival and increased tumour aggressiveness
Mutated BRAF gene in the stool that is found in Bowel cancer and is related to poor survival
Quantification of human (h)DNA determines the relative amounts of human DNA in the stool. Increased concentrations of human DNA in stool samples are found in Bowel cancer samples.