RESEARCHERS have secured an £84,000 grant to study why the take-up rate for Scotland's screening programme for bowel cancer is so low.

Bowel cancer is the UK's second-biggest cancer killer, accounting for 10per cent of all cancer deaths, yet only just over half of women eligible for the screening programme take part north of the Border.

The 58 per cent uptake rate for bowel screening among women contrasts with participation rates of 74 per cent and 71 per cent for breast and cervical screening respectively.

Researchers at the University of Glasgow have secured the funding from the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative to find out why the take-up rate for bowel cancer is much lower and what can be learned from other screening programmes to improve participation.

Dr Katie Robb in the Institute of Health & Wellbeing, who is leading the project with Professor Colin McCowan of the Robertson Centre for Biostatistics, said: "We know that screening is an effective way to detect cancer early in its development before symptoms may have appeared, and catching it at an earlier stage can significantly reduce deaths.

"Public support for screening programmes is high, with surveys in the US and the UK showing 90per cent of people in favour, but actual uptake of screening opportunities varies dramatically.

"It is important to understand why bowel cancer screening is failing to achieve the same uptake rates as breast or cervical screening."

Bowel cancer screening is a much more recent addition to the cancer screening programmes in Scotland, having been introduced in 2007 for anyone aged 50-74, while breast and cervical screening both began in 1988. However, participation rates for the latter achieved participation rates of more than 70per cent within a few years.

Bowel cancer screening comprises a home-testing kit, called a faecal occult blood test.

Dr Robb said: "Bowel cancer screening is a test you do yourself at home and so people may be slightly less familiar with this approach.

"Our study will look at the various factors - socio-economic, demographic, or relating to medical differences - that might be barriers to participation and consider new ways of encouraging people to take the opportunity to consider benefiting from a potentially life-saving intervention."