Month: May 2026

By Hira Humayun, CNN

Click here for updates on this story

    May 29, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — When gangs set fire to the FIFA Goal Center in Haiti’s capital this year, it wasn’t just a key sports ground that went up in flames. It was the center of Haitian youth sports, a training ground for talent and home to the dreams held by young athletes in a country battered by violence.

Months earlier, Louicius Deedson –– who used to be one of those budding athletes –– had helped make history with the Haitian national team in Curaçao. They beat Nicaragua in the World Cup qualifier and secured Haiti’s place in the world’s biggest single-sport event for the first time in over 50 years.

The streets of Port-au-Prince came alive with euphoric fans in a brief moment of respite that punctuated the turbulence and overlapping crises that have engulfed the country.

“It’s been a long time since you see Haitian people united like this,” said Deedson, 25, who scored one of the two winning goals for Haiti in the November match. It is a remarkable achievement for the national team that had to train abroad due to the country’s violent instability.

Gangs control an estimated 80 to 90% of the capital, according to the United Nations, including areas home to some of the country’s biggest stadiums. Sylvio Cator in downtown Port-au-Prince was where the national team trained for decades, even for its last and only World Cup stint in the 70s.

But it has not been used by the team for years as armed groups have become increasingly powerful in the country, especially after the 2021 assassination of former Haitian President Jovenel Moise left a power vacuum.

The stadium is now used by people seeking shelter from gangs, who now control key routes to and from the capital, choking off vital supplies in the Caribbean nation grappling with a deepening hunger crisis. Fear permeates every aspect of life in parts of Haiti and the sports world is no exception.

Deedson has played at stadiums now under gang control, and laments that Haitian kids aspiring to make the national team one day can’t use those vital facilities.

The Haitian midfielder who now plays for Major League Soccer’s FC Dallas is from Port-au-Prince’s Tabarre district. The aftermath of the 2010 earthquake and armed gang attacks made daily life tough, but Deedson didn’t see the worst of it. As a young teen he moved to the United States to pursue his soccer career and an education.

“I think moving to the US was the best thing for me at the moment,” he told CNN.

photo

The game goes on

Many of the national team players are born, raised and reside abroad in countries like France where they play for European soccer leagues. Even when representing Haiti during the World Cup qualifiers, the unrest in the country has meant they have not been able to play any home games, practice in Haitian stadiums, nor could their French coach travel to the Caribbean nation. They are instead training in Florida and New Jersey in the lead-up to the tournament.

Woodensky Pierre is one of the few players on the national team who grew up and still lives in Haiti – and the only one who currently plays in the country’s soccer league.

He hails from the impoverished Cite Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, where he began playing soccer with his father as a child, before leaving the neighborhood to live with his mother. Like many other Haitian kids he faced financial barriers to a promising soccer career.

“There was a moment where I felt like I would never make it to this point because things were very difficult, I had no support, nothing,” he told CNN over Zoom from Port-au-Prince. “I did not grow up in a rich family, my mom was a street vendor, and my father was always doing side jobs. Football was all I had.”

Even today, sports-related expenses like equipment, travel and programs are difficult to come by for families struggling to make ends meet as economic turmoil and armed violence have weighed heavily on employment opportunities for many Haitians. Pierre eventually got a soccer scholarship that got him through school.

But his hometown of Cite Soleil remains a hotbed for armed attacks. On May 11, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) suspended operations in the area as armed clashes injured dozens and pushed hundreds to seek shelter at the medical facility. Pierre now plays as a midfielder for Haitian soccer team Violette Athletic Club, part of the Haitian soccer league that plays on amid the country’s overlapping crises. On May 10, Pierre’s team won the final game of the national championship at the Parc Sainte-Therese stadium in Port-au-Prince’s Petionville area – one of the few areas of the capital not entirely overrun by gangs.

Wasting talent

Making it to Haiti’s final World Cup squad as an athlete playing in Haiti, Pierre hopes opportunities will open up for other young talent to make it to the national league someday.

In his country, youth sport is not only a means of empowerment for children growing up under violence it is an avenue of engagement for that vulnerable group at a time when about half of Haiti’s gangs are made up of minors, according to the UN.

It’s among the reasons Haiti’s Ministry of Youth, Sports and Civic Action wants to build more sports facilities – an ambition stunted by the unrest in many places.

“It’s killing us, whenever we see a kid with a gun,” the ministry’s communications director Louis Alex Francois told CNN. “Our prayers (are) for that unrest to stop so we can be with the youth and the kids, to offer them a better alternative, a better future.” Pierre’s former agent, France-based Jerome Salbert, said the athlete’s background has given him the grit and resilience needed to excel in a soccer career.

“The fact that he was born in a tough neighborhood in Haiti…he developed a mentality of a warrior,” Salbert told CNN.

Salbert scouted Woodensky remotely – unable to watch him play in person because of the security-related travel restrictions, especially at Port-au-Prince’s international airport. He says that’s just one of the reasons why many Haitian soccer players are unable to sign with agents who can present them with international opportunities to push their careers forward.

photo

“The fact that the country is (in) a humanitarian crisis, sometimes you can face a lot of instability with the players…because they are young, they don’t trust easily, sometimes they live with gangs surrounding their houses,” Salbert told CNN.

“It (was) everything for me as a young guy to be able to go to school with my friends and play soccer twice a day, every day,” said Deedson, reminiscing about his childhood on the soccer fields of Port-au-Prince’s landmark sports centers.

But today, the surge of violence presents a very different set of circumstances for sports lovers.

“I know there’s a lot of Haitian kids that are very good and they just want the chance to show themselves,” Deedson said. “There’s a lot of talent there that’s wasting right now.”

His own childhood home in the Port-au-Prince area was partially burned down in a gang attack last year. It was the house his parents worked hard to build and raise him and his sister. Other parts of his family in Haiti have had to flee gang attacks.

“It’s not just my family, it’s everyone in Haiti,” Deedson said. Even from Texas – he’s plugged into what’s happening back in the Caribbean nation, praying for things to turn around.

He hopes Haiti’s historic World Cup participation can somewhat help do that – in any way.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Kierra Lee
KIELEESTYLE@GMAIL.COM
4096658446

By Christopher Cicchiello | Quincy News Correspondent

Click here for updates on this story

    Washington (Quincy News) — Core inflation rose 0.2% in April, a Thursday report from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis shows. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.4% for the month, bringing annual inflation to 3.8%, the highest level in nearly three years.

This latest data comes as Americans’ confidence in the economy continues to weaken. The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index slipped 0.7 points in May to 93.1, as the share of respondents describing business conditions as “good” dropped to 18.5%, down from 22.3% in April.

The Conference Board’s Chief Economist Dana Peterson attributed this decline in sentiment to growing concerns over the economic impact of the war in the Middle East. “Consumer confidence edged downward in May as the inflationary impacts of the war in the Middle East intensified,” Peterson said. President Donald Trump said Friday on social media that he plans to issue a “final determination” on the conflict.

In Thursday’s White House press briefing, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed concerns about the findings from the latest PCE report. “One month does not a trend make,” Bessent said, adding that he believes “prices could come down very quickly” at the conclusion of the war.

“This constant whipsaw of ‘there’s a deal, there’s not a deal, there’s a deal, there’s not a deal’ weighs on people,” Professor David Mitchell, the Director of the Bureau of Economic Research at Missouri State University, told Quincy News. “Everybody knows why gas prices are high … For lack of a better word, people need some stability in their lives.”

Mitchell noted one statistic that illustrates just how people are “falling further and further behind” came from The Wall Street Journal: 90-day delinquencies on credit cards are at the highest levels since the 2008 financial crisis.

“It’s a source of consternation,” Mitchell said. “It makes you say, ‘What’s going on here? What can I do? I’m playing by the rules, I’ve done everything I can and I’m still falling behind.”’

Results from The Conference Board survey align with the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers, as sentiment fell for the third straight month. Across party lines, confidence among independents and Republicans dipped to the lowest levels since Trump began his second term. Chief among respondents’ concerns was an “eroding of personal finances,” the report reads. Separately, Commerce Department data showed personal income decreased by $0.1 billion in April, while disposable personal income fell by $19.9 billion.

This is the economic landscape facing newly sworn-in Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh. Economists and policymakers will be watching June’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting for signals on his approach to interest rates, after Trump suggested Warsh will be more amenable to rate cuts – a position that could create divisions within the Fed.

“The first thing I’d be looking for is that first meeting interaction with him (Warsh) and all the other fed governors,” Mitchell said. “It’s one thing to say here’s what I want to do. It’s another thing when you’re in the sausage factory trying to make the sausages. It’ll be interesting to see how he deals with these dissenting opinions.”

Mitchell is referring to divided opinions within the Fed on what to do about interest rates. Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook said Wednesday that while she believes the central bank should keep short-term interest rates firm, she is prepared to raise rates if necessary.

The next PCE report is scheduled for release June 25.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Tim Johns

Click here for updates on this story

    ALAMEDA, California (KGO) — One week later, and the bruises still haven’t healed on 83-year-old Mary Jo Kelly’s face.

Last Thursday, the longtime Alameda resident was on her nightly walk when suddenly she was attacked from behind by a pair of wild turkeys.

“I went headfirst, and I broke my glasses. I hit the palm of my hand, my thumb. I bled in the nose,” Kelly said.

After managing to get away from the turkeys, Kelly was able to call her husband, who took her to the ER. It was there that she got a CT scan, as well as six stitches in her right hand.

The incident has left her shaken but also frustrated.

Kelly wants Alameda to do more to protect its residents from the turkeys. She worries that what happened to her could soon happen to someone else.

Following the attack, Kelly says she called the Alameda Police Department to file a report, something she says officers were unable to do since the incident involved wildlife.

“If a dog bites you, of course they’re going to pick him up. But that’s domestic. So they’re ignoring the problem basically,” Kelly said.

Emily Crum is an animal control officer with the Alameda Police Department. She said, for now, the city is unable to remove any of the wild turkeys.

Crum said spring is mating season for the animals. During this time, APD advises residents to take extra precautions. The department said a turkey also recently attacked a pet dog.

“Try to not approach them. Go on the other side of the street. Make sure you have a leash on your dog. And just try to stay as far away from them as possible,” Crum said.

As for Kelly, she’s determined to not let the attack frighten her for good. But for the time being, she’s staying a little closer to home and a little further from any turkeys.

“It was just pretty scary. Kind of shell shocked. A little afraid to go too far,” she said.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Leah Asmelash, CNN

Click here for updates on this story

    May 29, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — Diana Beasley knew she wanted to spend her 12th birthday at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, surrounded by the paintings of Amy Sherald.

She dressed up for the occasion, wearing a sparkly pink crown reading “BIRTHDAY GIRL” over her neat braids. Diana learned about Sherald in school, she said, and she likes how her art is “realistic, but also a bit cartoony at the same time.”

Her favorite piece by Sherald, she said, was the official portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama. In it, as in most of Sherald’s portraits, the subject looks straight ahead at the viewer. Her skin is not a naturalistic brown but rendered in grays, in the artist’s signature style, draped in a vivid black and white dress with multicolored geometric details and a soft baby blue background.

Obama looks determined, Diana said, like “she’s serious about her job.”

That Michelle Obama portrait, presented in front of two benches for attendees to sit and take in her gaze, is one of the main draws of the “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” exhibit, which arrived in Atlanta this month for the final stage of a 17-month national tour.

When the painting was unveiled at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in 2018 — in tandem with Kehinde Wiley’s presidential portrait of Barack Obama — it seemed to mark Sherald’s enshrinement in a new official establishment, one in which Black figures and Black perspectives were uncontroversially part of the canon.

photo

Eight years later, Sherald’s work is traveling through a different cultural landscape. “American Sublime” was supposed to have brought Sherald back to the National Portrait Gallery last year, after the tour spent a few months at the Whitney in New York. Then Sherald learned that the federally funded institution wanted to accompany her painting “Trans Forming Liberty,” which shows a Black transgender woman in the stance of the Statue of Liberty, with a video of people reacting to the work — “to contextualize the piece,” as the Smithsonian put it.

Instead, Sherald withdrew the entire show, sending it to the Baltimore Museum of Art instead, and the Trump administration declared that “Trans Forming Liberty” had “fundamentally strayed from the mission and spirit of our national museums.”

Unavoidably, then, Sherald’s mid-career retrospective doubles as a look at the crisis of artistic expression in the country.

Two years ago, her works, with their ordinary subjects, felt celebratory, said Sarah Roberts, who curated “American Sublime” for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Shortly before the exhibit’s premiere, SFMOMA purchased Sherald’s “For love, and for country” painting of two Black men kissing while holding sailor hats, a restaging of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s “V-J Day in Times Square” photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse, as a nod toward the LGBTQ community’s impact in San Francisco.

But as federal and state governments restrict LGBTQ rights, the act of representation becomes one of defiance.

“It feels like more of a commitment,” Roberts said. “Like a reassertion of no, actually this is the America that exists in this museum, in this city, and we are not letting that go.”

The show was a hit in Baltimore, becoming the BMA’s most popular exhibit of the 21st century and drawing more than 80,000 people to the museum. (The museum’s second most popular exhibit since 2000 was its 2016-2017 “Matisse/Diebenkorn” exhibition, which drew 46,000 visitors.)

Sherald’s popularity is in part due to her ability to capture an alternative vision of the US to the one the federal government is promoting. In his second term, President Donald Trump has posted racist social media imagery, squashed research and initiatives that helped minorities, welcomed white South African refugees while banning other African refugees and those from Central and South America, and attacked health care and policies helping trans people.

Sherald’s work, meanwhile, uplifts the lives of everyday Black people. The viewpoint at trial, both politically and in Sherald’s art, is whose history and whose lives get to be considered American.

Robyn Palmore-Amos, who visited the High on the opening day of Sherald’s exhibit, said it felt as if the subjects could be her aunt, her uncle or her kids. Sherald’s restaging of “V-J Day in Times Square,” especially stood out to her. It was a reminder that Black men and women were just as much a part of the post-war period as white people were, she said.

“She’s portraying that we’re just as American as any other person who feels they’re American,” Palmore-Amos said. “We are American history. We have shaped the fabric of this country. There’s no part of America that doesn’t include Black people.”

The New Yorker and Vanity Fair have used Sherald’s portraits for their covers; the show includes a painting of Breonna Taylor that was specifically commissioned by Vanity Fair for its September 2020 cover. Days before the High’s opening, Sherald was at the Met Gala, where she was on the gala board, in an outfit referencing her own “Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance),” of a young woman sipping from an outsized teacup. She has also been photographed for the cover of Harper’s Bazaar and was named one of Time’s 2026 Women of the Year.

But that mass popularity means that her work is often seen in reproduction, either through a screen or on a cover of a magazine, rather than in its physical, painted form.

Her style can seem simple and understated on paper or on a screen, but in person, the portraits are colossal, sometimes up to 10 feet tall. The grays of the skin are richer than they appear in print, with subtle shifts in tone and lightness. While her work brings out each subject’s interiority in their stance or setting, her mastery is especially seen in the details: the etching on a bamboo earring, the fold of a jeans cuff, the sheen of fresh lip gloss. And there is the feeling of each character’s eyes taking in the viewer, creating a question of who is perceiving who. That doesn’t mean the works feel sad, or haunting; instead, taken together, they feel like peeks into life.

photo

That these figures and their lives stand within American history is a key part of the exhibit. Sherald’s “If You Surrendered to the Air, You Could Ride It,” featuring a lone man in a red beanie, nods to another famous photograph — “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” — of laborers eating lunch atop a steel beam. The titles, too: “American Grit,” of a boxer with no legs; the play on words of “Trans Forming Liberty”; even the exhibit title “American Sublime.”

That title had been bouncing around in Sherald’s head for years before the exhibition was even a thought, Roberts said. When she and the team were first putting the show together, they knew there would be an election in the fall of 2024, and the way the show would be perceived could change depending on the outcome. But the title, and the entire exhibition, highlights the beauty of being a Black American, Roberts said, and points to the possibility of a sublime future.

When the show opened in San Francisco the week following Donald Trump’s win, some visitors wept at the sight of Sherald’s towering portraits. As Trump’s first months back in office unfolded, encountering Sherald’s paintings began to feel “like a balm,” Roberts said.

Revisiting the works now, Roberts said they feel like “a bulwark against a difficult time.”

The Atlanta stop brings Sherald’s work back to the state where she was born and the city where she went to college. Jennifer Freeman Marshall visited the High’s exhibit on opening day with her daughter, a student at Spelman College a few miles away, her brother and their 82-year-old mother, who was rolled along in a wheelchair. As they moved through the works, Freeman Marshall admired Sherald’s “commitment to telling a story about the Black experience here in the United States.”

“It’s a narrative that’s as diverse as we are,” she said. She and her family could point to certain images and name the side of the family the subjects remind them of, she said, making the entire collection feel “very intimate.”

There is a tension between what Sherald imagines and what happens outside the walls of the exhibit. Her portrait of Taylor is situated between two other portraits of Black women, making the trio appear almost like a friend group. Nearby, Obama gazes on, and across from them is “Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance).” In this room, these women are peers. Outside of it, one of them is dead.

One painting, an earlier piece from 2009, cuts to this question. Titled “They Call Me Redbone, but I’d Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake,” a young girl in a yellow sundress printed with strawberries cocks her head to the viewer. How we are perceived is often not up to us, the painting declares.

Can artists paint a way to a different future? Part of Sherald’s goal is to create “images that she wants to see in the world,” said Angelica Arbelaez, who curated the show for the High.

“The images that she has seen in her life have changed the world, whether they’ve affirmed or distorted a certain kind of idea,” Arbelaez said. “She understands that images have the power to do that, and in her body of work, she is actually enacting that change.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Kierra Lee
KIELEESTYLE@GMAIL.COM
4096658446

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN

Click here for updates on this story

    May 29, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — The American Cancer Society is adding some new testing options to its screening guideline for colorectal cancers – and for the first time, that includes a blood test.

Colonoscopies are still considered the gold standard for detecting colorectal cancer, which starts in the colon or the rectum. The procedure, performed under anesthesia, allows doctors to closely examine the colon and rectum for warning signs of disease. People who would rather avoid an invasive exam might opt for other visual exams or stool-based tests, which have also remained a widely recommended option, even if the idea of collecting a fecal sample can make some people squeamish.

But many people tend to skip screening altogether because they don’t want to or can’t complete these options, even as there has been a rise in colorectal cancer cases at younger ages.

To help close that gap, the American Cancer Society now recommends another screening option: blood testing.

In an updated guideline released Wednesday, the American Cancer Society has added blood-based screening tests to its list of recommended choices for adults age 45 and older who are at average risk for colorectal cancer and who have not completed or have declined visual exams and stool tests.

The blood-based screening test the group recommends is the Shield test, by the biotech company Guardant Health. It was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2024.

The guideline also includes additional stool-based tests: an upgraded version of Cologuard, called Cologuard Plus, and a new FDA-approved test called ColoSense, which was developed by the biotech company Geneoscopy. Each is an at-home stool test, in which samples are collected at home and sent to a lab, where the test can detect molecular markers associated with colorectal cancer.

Blood test still isn’t the ‘first choice’

The researchers who published these updates in a report in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians wrote that “at this time, blood‐based tests should be recommended only to individuals who decline or do not complete preferred screening tests,” which would be visual imaging exams like a colonoscopy or stool-based tests.

A blood-based test is not the “first choice” because it’s not as sensitive as the other testing options in detecting precancerous polyps, but “I do think it is the right option for the right population of patients,” said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer for the American Cancer Society.

“There are a lot of people who can’t or won’t do a colonoscopy, or the idea of collecting their own stool for testing they just won’t do,” Dahut said. “Having more options hopefully will allow more people to be screened to find cancers earlier on, and we’ll be able to cure more patients.”

Screening can dramatically improve survival if a cancer is diagnosed before symptoms begin, because that means treatment can also start early. It’s estimated that more than 90% of people who detect colorectal cancer at stages I and II will survive at least the next five years.

When cancer is found at a more advanced stage, it may have spread into surrounding regions or other parts in the body, making it more difficult to treat and the patient less likely to survive, regardless of their age.

Getting screened also can help reduce the risk of developing colorectal cancer because almost all colorectal cancers begin as precancerous polyps in the colon or rectum. Through a visual exam, like a colonoscopy, these polyps can be identified and removed before they turn cancerous. Stool tests can also pick up signs of precancerous polyps, and if a stool test is positive, it must be followed up with a colonoscopy, which provides an opportunity for prevention, according to the American Cancer Society.

The updated screening guideline is “very forward thinking and reality based,” said Dr. Ursina Teitelbaum, a professor of gastrointestinal oncology at the University of Pennsylvania and section chief of gastrointestinal cancers at Penn Medicine, who was not involved in the American Cancer Society’s recommendations.

Teitelbaum added that blood-based testing remains another option, “albeit imperfect since it may miss early-stage cancers and precancerous lesions. It all harkens though to ‘perfect’ is the enemy of good and these new guidelines acknowledge the need to broaden the capture of screening, particularly in younger vulnerable populations,” Teitelbaum said in an email.

Although the Shield test is the first blood-based to be recommended, more could be on the horizon, said Dr. Scott Kopetz, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

“This is the first blood-based test but won’t be the last, and the hope is that future tests will continue to reduce the barriers to access to effective screening and will have improved performance. The technology will only improve from here,” Kopetz, who was not involved in the American Cancer Society’s updated guideline, said in an email.

For now, “the blood-based screening does not perform as well for detection of pre-cancer as the other screening options and therefore should be reserved for individuals who will not complete other recommended screening,” he wrote. “Importantly, patients who otherwise would be willing to be screened by colonoscopy, stool-based tests, or other recommended methods should not swap to the blood-based assays.”

What to know about your options

The American Cancer Society recommends three types of colorectal cancer screening tests: blood-based tests, visual exams and stool-based tests.

Dahut noted that the updated guideline and recommendations around the various screening options are only for adults at average risk of colorectal cancer.

Adults who may have a personal history or family history of colorectal cancer or advanced pre-cancer lesions, or other risk factors associated with colorectal cancer, are recommended to talk with their doctor about getting a colonoscopy.

“If you have symptoms of colorectal cancer, potentially – bleeding, pain, problems with your stool, abdominal pain – then the stool and blood tests are not appropriate,” Dahut said. “Then you should go in for a visualization.”

Blood-based tests

Blood-based tests, like the Shield test, involve simply having your blood drawn at a health care facility. To screen for cancer, the Shield test is recommended every three years.

“For individuals whose doctors are seeing that another year has gone by and they have not been screened, the blood-based test is probably the easiest to do because you can walk into your doctor’s office, get the blood and head home,” Dahut said.

The Shield test can detect signals for colorectal cancer from tumor DNA that may have shed into your blood. If it returns a positive result, a colonoscopy is recommended.

Test sensitivity

Clinical trial data shows that the Shield test has around 83% sensitivity for the detection of colorectal cancer, which is the test’s ability to correctly identify someone with the disease, and 90% specificity, which is the test’s ability to rule out whether someone has cancer.

Blood-based tests tend to have lower sensitivity for stage I cancers than stool-based tests and visual exams, Dahut said. “This test is very good at picking up stage II, stage III and stage IV cancers. It’s not as good at picking up the stage I or the adenomas, the precancers,” Dahut said. “That’s why we still prefer the other tests.”

Cost

The Shield test is a Medicare-covered service, according to its website, with $0 co-pay for most Medicare beneficiaries. The list price is around $1,495.

Visual exams

Visual examinations – including colonoscopies every 10 years, virtual colonoscopies every five years and flexible sigmoidoscopies, which examine only the lower half of the colon, every five years – involve using medical instruments or special imaging tests to look inside the colon and rectum to identify and, in some cases possibly remove, any polyps or lesions that might be cancer or precancerous.

Test sensitivity

Visual exams tend to have high sensitivity. For instance, it’s estimated that colonoscopy can have 95% sensitivity and up to 89% specificity. Potential risks of colonoscopy or other visual exams may include issues with anesthesia, bleeding or infection, but serious complications are rare.

Cost

Although most insurance companies fully cover visual exams for screening, “costs really can vary if a patient has to undergo follow-up exams for additional procedures. In spite of the rules under the ACA, some patients have reported surprise billing,” Dahut said of the Affordable Care Act, which requires both private insurers and Medicare to cover the costs of all colorectal cancer screening tests that are recommended by the US Preventive Services Task Force.

Stool-based tests

Stool-based screening involves collecting a sample of your feces and sending it to a lab to be tested for signs of cancer, such as small amounts of blood or traces of altered DNA or RNA from cells in the stool. These are recommended every year or every three years, depending on the test.

Test sensitivity

With Cologuard Plus, it’s estimated that 95% of adults with colorectal cancer will test positive, a measurement of its sensitivity, and 94% of adults without precancerous polyps or colorectal cancer will test negative, a measurement of its specificity, according to the product’s website. And ColoSense has demonstrated 93% sensitivity for detecting colorectal cancer, according to Geneoscopy, the company behind the test.

Cost

These types of tests are typically covered by insurance, but for people without insurance, they can cost hundreds of dollars. Without insurance, the self-pay price for the Cologuard Plus test is $599. Most insurance companies cover all recommended stool tests for colorectal cancer screening.

Deadliest cancer for young adults

The updated guideline reaffirms that average-risk adults should begin colorectal cancer screening at age 45 and continue through 75 for those with a life expectancy of more than 10 years. The guideline recommends that doctors discourage screening in people older than 85 because by that age, the risks outweigh the benefits.

The US Preventive Services Task Force also recommends starting screening at age 45, but it does not include blood-based testing as a recommended screening test. At the time the USPSTF recommendation was last updated in 2021, there was no FDA-approved blood test for primary screening in people at average risk.

The task force’s recommendations guide doctors and inform insurance coverage. It’s unclear whether the USPSTF will follow the American Cancer Society’s decision to recommend blood testing.

The task force has not met in over a year, and US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears to be restructuring its membership. The USPSTF aims to keep all of its recommendations current by reviewing each topic every five years for either an update or reaffirmation, which means its recommendation on colorectal cancer screening is due for another review.

It’s estimated that more than 90% of people complete screening when they have a blood-based test for colorectal cancer, compared with 28% to 71% of people who complete colonoscopy or stool testing, according to Guardant Health.

“The problem is the participation rate to colonoscopy and stool-based tests is not very high,” said AmirAli Talasaz, co-founder and co-chief executive officer of Guardant Health. “By making colorectal cancer screening more accessible with a blood-based option in conjunction with other established methodologies, we can get more people screened.”

In general, about 1 in 3 adults who are eligible for colorectal cancer screening still have not been tested with any screening option as recommended, according to the American Cancer Society. And colorectal cancer has surpassed other cancer types to become the leading cause of cancer deaths among people under 50 in the United States, as of 2023.

It’s estimated that more than 60% of colorectal cancer patients under 50 are diagnosed after the disease has advanced to stage III or IV.

Dahut said the American Cancer Society has been reviewing its screening guidelines and continues to look at data to evaluate whether the recommended age to start screening should be lower than 45.

“We were one of the first to lower it to 45, and if there’s evidence to lower it to 40 or 42, we’ll certainly be doing that,” he said. Kopetz, from MD Anderson, said for now “it is reasonable” to start screening at age 45 for average-risk people.

“Unless there is a family history or cancer predisposition syndrome, it is reasonable to start screening at age 45. Research is ongoing to develop screening strategies that may address the growing incidence of early-onset colorectal cancer,” Kopetz said “There is a hope that future blood-tests may be sufficiently accurate and cost-effective for cancer screening in a population younger than 45 years old, but we do not yet have that evidence or the right test for this.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Kierra Lee
KIELEESTYLE@GMAIL.COM
4096658446