Grace Burns

You appear to find that people with irritable bowel syndrome have higher levels of faecal calprotectin, but not as high as people who have inflammatory bowel disease.

Is this something that might be used in the future in that if you're querying someone has IBS, a clinician might actually order a faecal calprotectin and it might not be that it's outside the normal range, but it's higher than...

than what normal people have?

All of this evidence

stuff that we've discussed, Grace, how does it translate into the real world?

Because people are listening, I think I have IBS or I've been diagnosed with it, or I think my child has it.

We're talking about these pro-inflammatory markers, interleukin-6, TNF-alpha.

These are quite specific inflammatory markers that we're talking about.

Are people going to go and have this ordered?

Is this just going to be done off the bat or is there still a way to go for this to actually have an impact on the ground in the diagnosis of IBS in people?

Dr. Grace Burns from the Centre for Research Excellence in Digestive Health at the University of Newcastle.

Norman, we've talked quite a bit about bowel cancer on the health report, particularly about increasing bowel cancer rates in younger people, not many people actually engaging in the bowel cancer screening program, despite it being very effective.

There's a study that's been published involving researchers from the University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, and it's looking at people presenting in general practice with symptoms that could be bowel cancer and

And there's not very consistent investigation.

There's big variations and it's a little bit concerning because are people being missed and do we need clearer guidelines?

We are joined now on the health report by Dr Shaoqi Li, who is a research fellow in the Cancer in Primary Care team at the University of Melbourne and also an author on the study.

Thank you for joining us.

Can you just talk us through what some of the symptoms are that people might be going to see their GP with that could be bowel cancer that aren't being investigated?

You also found that if people presented multiple times to the GP, so they kept going back with their symptoms, that they were actually more likely to be investigated.

So is a takeaway perhaps for people listening if you're worried if things aren't settling to keep knocking on the door because you may then get the investigation you require?