A US television celebrity whose colonoscopy was shown live on television is being credited for a near 20% rise in the number of people having the procedure.
Doctors who tracked the number of colonoscopies in the months after the screening say the increase shows the power of celebrities, and they suggest that more research be carried out on using stars to promote public health messages.
The research, reported at the annual conference of the Society of General Internal Medicine in Atlanta on 3 May, looked at the after effects of a five day campaign to raise awareness of colon cancer that featured Katie Couric, co-host of NBC's Today Show. Couric's husband, Jay Monahan, died from colon cancer at the age of 42.
The cornerstone of the campaign featured her having a live, on-air colonoscopy. To quantify the effects of the campaign, the University of Michigan researchers examined colonoscopy rates drawn from a database of 400 endoscopists across the United States and from a managed care organisation from 89 weeks before the procedure to 40 weeks after it.
The data showed that the average number of colonoscopies performed by each doctor increased from 4.76 to 6.13 a week.