New blood test allows early detection of 50 types of cancer

A group of scientists have developed a blood test that allows the early detection of 50 types of canceras the results of a recently published study show.

The work, published in the magazine Annals of Oncology, found this the simple blood test can identify different types of cancer, such as ovary, pancreas, neck, Head, esophagus and some blood cancers.

All of these tumors are barely diagnosed before the first symptoms appear, so its early detection by blood test would allow more effective treatment of patients, increasing the chances of survival.

The test, which was tested by the National health service (NHS) in the UK, is aimed at people at increased risk of contracting the disease, such as patients aged 50 and over without symptoms.

The test developed by researchers from American society Grail, detects chemical changes in DNA fragments that leak through tumors into the blood. More precisely, the test focuses on chemical changes known as “methylation patterns”“.

The study was carried out with samples from 3,536 people analyzed over the past two years. More than two-thirds of them had cancer, or 2,823 in total. The test correctly detected the presence of cancer in 51.5% of cases, and it produced only 0.5% false positives.

Mostly, it has been shown that the test is more effective with cancers that are difficult to diagnose, such as those of the head, neck, ovaries or blood. For example, it detected two-thirds of cancers of the esophagus, liver and pancreas, for which there was no early detection.

During, the ability to test positive for blood cancers, such as lymphoma and myeloma, was 55.1 percent.

In 88.7% of cases, the test even succeeded in locating the affected tissue.

This test “gives impressive results”he told the british newspaper The Guardian Dr Marco Gerlinger of the London Cancer Research Institute. “False positives are low, which is important because it avoids any misdiagnosis. For some of the most common types of cancer such as intestine or lung, the test even detected them at a stage where many of them can be cured “added the specialist.

For his part, the doctor Eric Klein, The president of the Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute at the Cleveland Clinic in the United States and the study’s first author, told the same outlet: “Detecting cancer early, when treatment is most likely to be successful, is one of the most important opportunities we have to reduce the burden of cancer.”

“These data suggest that, used in conjunction with existing screening tests, multiple cancer screening can have a profound impact in the way cancer is detected and also in public health ”.

The next step in the investigation will be to determine if the test maintains its effectiveness when several types of cancer are present without any prior manifestation.

Even so, the accuracy of the test is considered sufficient to perform a more thorough test in UK public hospitals: 140,000 “at risk” subjects will participate in a pilot program that will begin in September 2021. The results will be known in the next 2023.

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