Abstract:

The incidence of colorectal cancer is increasing in China. Colonoscopy is the gold standard for the diagnosis of colorectal cancer. However,it is not easy to be accepted by patients due to pain,discomfort,bleeding,perforation and other complications,since it is an invasive examination. Non-invasive screening of blood and stool markers is more likely to be accepted. The determinations of fecal occult blood and serum carbohydrate antigen（CA） are the most commonly used screening methods. In recent years,tumor type M2 pyruvate kinase（tM2-PK） is valuable in screening. With the development of molecular biology,promoter hypermethylation in epigenetics and aberrant expression of microRNA（miRNA） in the determinations of blood and feces are expected to improve the early determination rate of colorectal cancer. However,a large number of clinical studies are still needed to confirm these methods.

Key words: Colorectal cancer, Fecal occult blood, Carbohydrate antigen, Tumor type M2 pyruvate kinase, DNA methylation, MicroRNA