A New Zealand study of a new non-invasive bladder cancer test by Dunedin company Pacific Edge shows accuracy rates of 90% in identifying tumours, which could offer benefits in costs and time-saving to district health boards, patients and clinicians.
While having gained regulatory approval to begin selling its CxBladder tests in the United States, and opened its own large test processing laboratory in Pennsylvania, Pacific Edge continues to target markets elsewhere, including New Zealand, Australia and Spain.
Two programmes in New Zealand, in a combined study of 178 patients with macro-haematuria (blood in urine), found Cxbladder outperformed cytology tests and saw 90% of all tumours, Pacific Edge's commercial manager Brent Pownall said in a statement yesterday.
The full results were being prepared for publication, he said.
''The New Zealand user study demonstrates that Cxbladder is a highly accurate and efficient detection test for urothelial carcinomas in the New Zealand healthcare context,'' he said.
Pacific Edge has said in the past, a full work-up using existing invasive tests cost up to $2000, while CxBladder was about $320.
Mr Pownall said the New Zealand study confirmed results from a larger, multicentre Australasian study published last September, in the peer-reviewed Journal of Urology in the US, where Cxbladder outperformed the other commercially available tests benchmarked in the study.
''We look forward to having this product more widely used in New Zealand's healthcare programmes, thus benefiting district health boards, clinicians and patients alike,'' Mr Pownall said.
He said patients with blood in their urine who were given the choice of giving a urine sample for Cxbladder, or undergoing an extensive work-up and discomfort of a cystocopy, were likely to choose Cxbladder.
