Research: Kidney cancer shows in urine

[United Press International]

SAN FRANCISCO, May 10 (UPI) -- Researchers at San
Francisco's Fox Chase Cancer Center have demonstrated the ability to
identify kidney cancer in the urine of affected patients.
More encouraging is that urine tests were repeated following
the removal of the cancerous kidney and none of the tests showed DNA
evidence of disease.
"We used a common laboratory procedure to test the urine of
50 patients with kidney cancer," explained Fox Chase molecular
biologist Paul Cairns, Ph.D. "Forty-four of the 50 tests showed gene
changes in the urine that were identical to the gene changes found
in the tumor tissue taken at the time of surgery."
"The test appears to be remarkably accurate with no
false-positives in this study," said Robert G. Uzzo, M.D., a
urologic surgeon at Fox Chase and lead author of the abstract. "In
addition, one of the most impressive outcomes of this research is
that the test also identified 27 of the 30 patients with stage I
disease."
The research findings were presented at the American
Urological Association Annual Meeting May 8-13 in San Francisco.