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A new melanoma blood test detected cancer at an early stage while it is still highly treatable and survival rates exceed 98%. Melanoma, which often spreads rapidly, is currently detected by biopsies and skin exams.
Misidentification
Melanoma is the most dangerous type of skin cancer, often badociated with the sun's ultraviolet rays or tanning beds. Because melanoma can spread so quickly and is so threatening, early detection is crucial. But identifying melanoma is often difficult.
Typically, doctors identify suspicious moles, which they visually examine and cut out for biopsies. However, this process is not flawless: only 30% of the tissues badyzed are identified as melanomas, and a substantial amount of cancers is actually missing.
An Unforgivable Delay
In an article titled "An Unforgivable Delay" published in the Lancet in 2005, a psychiatrist acknowledges how, as a young internist, he rejected soft tissue swelling in a woman who had died. middle age, as a "lipoma" – a benign tumor made of adipose tissue. To his great disappointment, he later realized that it was a melanoma. The confessional prompted this review because of recent similar experiences with the diagnosis of this tumor.
"When I was a young doctor I temporarily replaced an internist established in my city.One morning, a 45-year-old woman came to see me in a state of great anxiety," wrote Alberto Foglia in 2005. "She had noticed deep, deep swelling in her right thigh, she told me openly that she had not wanted to come to me because she thought I was She was too young, but she felt that she could not wait for the regular doctor's return a month later, and at the same time she was constantly asking me to rebadure myself. "Is that right, Doctor, that this does not matter? It's just a cyst, is not it? "
The stories where melanoma has been misidentified or missed abound, that is why a blood test could make such a difference – not only would that help the accuracy of the diagnosis, but it would allow early detection of melanoma, which is often difficult.
A Blood Test
Developed by scientists from the Edith Cowan University in Australia, the test does not detect the melanoma itself, but rather the auto-antibodies produced by the body to fight cancer. The trial involved about 200 people – half of whom had melanoma. The results were impressive, but not perfect: the test was successful in 81.5% of cases. However, even with this success rate, early detection could save thousands of lives, since melanoma claims 1,500 lives each year in Australia alone, says Professor Mel Ziman, head of the Melanoma Research Group. university, which led the study.
If melanoma is detected when it is less than 1 mm thick, you have 98-99% chance of survival, Ziman says. If that extends beyond that, things can become much more difficult.
"It is essential that melanoma be diagnosed more accurately and earlier," Ziman said. "So a blood test would help this identification especially at the early stage of melanoma, which is the most worrisome and would be most beneficial for everyone if it was identified early."
It is important to note that this blood test is still only in its early stages. Not only must researchers improve the sensitivity of the procedure and reduce the false-positive rate, but the test must also be evaluated more thoroughly and on a larger number of participants. He will now undergo clinical trials, which are scheduled in the next three years. The test did not find other types of skin cancer.
Up to now, the medical community has been cautiously optimistic about this. There is still a long way to go before we can talk about this blood test in hospitals and for now, warn scientists, you should always check regularly if your skin has abnormal moles. or if you use tanning beds.
"The false positive and false negative rates of this test mean that the results should be interpreted with caution and, if possible, combined with a complete skin check by a dermatologist. Sinclair, a dermatology expert from the University of Melbourne, told the Australian Associated Press
Journal Reference: Pauline Zaenker et al. A diagnostic autoantibody signature for primary cutaneous melanoma, Oncotarget (2018). DOI: 10.18632 / oncotarget.25669
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