Does Hot Weather Affect the Sensitivity of Immunochemical Fecal Occult Blood Testing?

A fecal occult blood testing (FOBT) screening program has been in place in Florence, Italy, since 1982. A latex agglutination immunochemical FOBT was introduced there in 2000 and updated in 2004. To assess how well the test performed in different seasons of the year, researchers retrospectively analyzed 199,654 results of tests conducted from 2001 through 2008.

The mean hemoglobin concentration per sample, in ng/mL, was 27.6 in spring, 25.2 in summer, 29.2 in autumn, and 29.5 in winter. Logistic regression analyses (adjusted for patient age, sex, and history of screening) revealed that tests in the summer versus those in the winter were significantly less likely to be positive (odds ratio, 0.83) and to detect cancer or advanced adenoma (OR, …