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The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has released new guidelines for colorectal cancer screening that urge annual screening for people ages 50 to 75 and specifiy the type of test and screening interval recommended. The USPSTF also newly recommends when to stop regular colorectal screening, advising against screening patients older than 85 and recommending that those between the ages of 76 and 85 consider individual health status, results of prior screening, and life expectancy before getting screened. Click here for more information.

A simple test that can detect within three hours several types of HPV that can cause cervical cancer has been developed. Researchers are hopeful that the test could help developing countries improve screening and detection of cervical cancer since it does not require specially trained personnel or much resources. A study comparing this experimental test to other cervical cancer screening tests found it promising and potentially appropriate for use in resource-constrained screening programs.

A recent clinical trial found that treatment with the statin drug rosuvastatin could significantly reduce cardiovascular problems in presumably healthy people who have normal but relatively high levels of the inflammation marker hs-CRP, but because the study didn’t evaluate hs-CRP test results as a basis for prescribing the drug, the authors make no suggestions about using the test to guide treatment at this time.

An experimental test may someday tell pregnant women if their fetuses have particular genetic defects that cause serious problems in mental and physical development, without the risk of miscarriage posed by current diagnostic methods, according to recent research. The new approach, described in the October 6 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, determines whether the fetus has aneuploidy by testing a sample of the mother’s blood for pieces of fetal DNA.