ArticleCommunications medicine2026
5-methylcytosine and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine are synergistic biomarkers for early detection of colorectal cancer.
Article in Communications medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Urinary DNA Methylation and Hydroxymethylation Dynamics as Candidate Biomarkers of Occupational Chemical Exposure-An Exploratory Pilot Study.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- TET Enzymes as Epigenetic Integrators in Intestinal Immunity, Inflammation, and Disease.Journal of personalized medicine · 2026Review
- Long-read sequencing technologies and bioinformatics: a new perspective for decoding DNA methylation modifications.Journal of translational medicine · 2026Review
- HM-DyadCap - capture and mapping of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine/5-methylcytosine CpG dyads in mammalian DNA.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- 5mC and 5hmC methylation sequencing: the power of 6-base sequencing in a multiomic era.Epigenomics · 2026Review
- How advances in machine learning drive early detection and risk prediction of early-onset colorectal cancer.Frontiers in oncology · 2026Review
- The impact of artificial intelligence on biomarker discovery.Emerging topics in life sciences · 2025Article
- Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEarly cancer detection has the potential to significantly improve treatment outcomes and survival rates. This study investigates the roles of 5-methylcytosine (5mC) and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) as biomarkers for early-stage colorectal cancer (CRC) detection in cell-free DNA (cfDNA).
methodsWe analyzed cfDNA from 37 treatment-naive CRC patients and 32 healthy controls using duet evoC 6-base whole genome sequencing (A, C, T, G, 5mC, 5hmC). We then built CRC classifiers using differentially methylated regions identified in stage IV CRC tissue samples. We compared the performance of models using 5mC-only, 5hmC-only, modified cytosine, or 5mC and 5hmC features.
resultsHere we show that models combining measurements of 5mC and 5hmC significantly enhance diagnostic accuracy (AUC = 0.95) compared to traditional approaches that conflate these markers (modified C, AUC = 0.66). Notably, of all the DMRs considered, almost half show an increase in 5hmC at stage I and a corresponding decrease in 5mC at stage IV, suggesting that 5hmC can effectively track regions undergoing demethylation during tumor development.
conclusionsThese results support the hypothesis that distinguishing between 5mC and 5hmC improves the sensitivity of liquid biopsy tests for early-stage cancer detection.
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.