I understand insurance may be a cause that a test cannot be administered to someone that doesn’t fit their criteria. What I want to know is if there is a scientific reason a test will work on someone who is 45 but not on someone who is 40. Or someone who is 50 but not someone who is 42.
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There are multiple factors involved in making something suitable for screening.
It includes that others have said.
Another factor not mentioned yet is cost-effectiveness. For the number of test you do, how many of the target disease will be picked up, and then how many years of life saved/disability avoided. So if you are thinking about looking for colon cancer you should target the age range that is affected most (and probably a bit beyond that age range at either end of it). There’s no point in doing the screening test in a group that isn’t affected; in the colon cancer example you wouldn’t do it on children as they don’t get colon cancer (for clarity there are exceptionally rare cases, most of which wouldn’t be picked up by the stool test used in my country to indicate who needs a colonoscopy)
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