A simple home screening test for colon cancer can reduce the risk of dying from the disease by 33%, a new study shows.

Results indicate that undergoing annual at-home FIT (fecal immunochemical test) screening “is as good as getting a colonoscopy every 10 years for screening people of average risk,” said senior study author Dr. Chyke Doubeni, a professor at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.

“This study should give individuals and their clinicians the confidence to use this noninvasive test for screening and find ways to deploy these tests in underserved communities where colorectal cancer screening rates are very low,” Doubeni added in a university news release.

FIT screening uses antibodies to detect blood in a person’s stool, which is a sign of either colon cancer or precancerous polyps, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the study, researchers evaluated data from nearly 11,000 Kaiser Permanente patients who underwent at home FIT screening in northern and southern California between 2002 and 2017.

With an at-home FIT screening, people collect their own stool sample in privacy and then send it off to a lab for analysis.

Some people aren’t comfortable with a colonoscopy, which is considered the gold standard for colon cancer screening, Doubeni said. In the procedure, patients are sedated while a thin tube equipped with a camera is inserted in the rectum to view the intestinal lining.

“Although we have known for decades that colorectal cancer can be caught in its earliest, precancerous state through screening, only about 60% of Americans 45-75 years old are up to date with screening,” Doubeni noted.

FIT screening reduced the overall risk of colon cancer death by 33%, and reduced the risk of a cancer occurring on the left side of the colon by 42%.

Left-sided colon cancer occurs much more frequently than right-sided cancer, according to the advocacy group Fight Colorectal Cancer.

FIT screening also reduces the risk of colon cancer death for most ethnic groups – Asian people by 63%, Black people by 42%, and white people by 30%, results showed. There also was a 22% lower risk of death among Hispanic people, but the result was not statistically significant.

The findings were published recently in the journal JAMA Network Open.

“Colorectal cancer screening works and is one of the best ways of decreasing deaths from colorectal cancer,” said study co-author Dr. Douglas Corley, chief research officer from Kaiser Permanente, Northern California. “This study, of at least one FIT screening in the last few years, confirms this method is an effective tool. It can be performed at home, and we anticipate that regular, annual use, as recommended, can result in even larger reductions in cancer deaths over time.”

“In our setting, providing multiple methods for cancer screening has increased participation to over 80%, which has been associated with approximately a 50% reduction in colorectal cancer deaths,” Corley said.

However, Doubeni noted it is critical that a person who receives an abnormal FIT result get a follow-up colonoscopy without delay. During the colonoscopy, doctors can verify the FIT results and safely remove any precancerous polyps they find.