How to Detect Cancer Early Using Blood Test?

A study of a blood test to detect more than 50 types of cancers is accurate enough to be rolled out as a multi-cancer screening test among people at higher risk of the disease.

Recently published study in the journal Annals of Oncology reported that the blood test accurately detected cancer before any symptoms arose, while having a very low false positive rate, helped to choose effective diagnostic tests.

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‘Early multi-cancer detection test using DNA pattern from blood shows promising results.’
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GRAIL, Inc. (California, USA) is developing and funding the research, has now made the multi-cancer early detection test available in the USA by prescription only, and to complement other existing screening methods for breast, cervical, prostate, lung and bowel cancers.

First author of the paper, Dr Eric Klein, chairman of the Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, USA, said: "Finding cancer early, when treatment is more likely to be successful, is one of the most significant opportunities we have to reduce the burden of cancer. These data suggest that, if used alongside existing screening tests, the multi-cancer detection test could have a profound impact on how cancer is detected and, ultimately, on public health” .

The test involves taking a sample of blood from each patient and analyzing it for DNA, known as cell-free DNA (cfDNA), which tumors (and other cells) shed into the blood to detect abnormal methylation patterns that suggest cancer is present.

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The blood test detected cancer signals from more than 50 different types of cancer and found that the sensitivity or true positive rate of the test across all four cancer stages (I, II, III, IV) is 51.5% and the false positive rate is only 0.5%.

The overall sensitivity of the test is twice that for solid tumors that do have screening options, such as breast, bowel, cervical and prostate cancers.

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The multi-cancer early detection test correctly identified the tissue in which the cancer is located in the body in 88.7% of cases.

These data support the use of next-generation sequencing for the detection of cell-free DNA in blood samples as a tool for earlier detection of common cancers that account for a significant number of deaths and other health problems worldwide.

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A simple screening test that requires only a blood draw can provide an option for communities that have poor access to medical facilities.

Developing technologies for early detection of cancer and therapeutic interventions with major efforts related to population awareness are the next frontier in cancer research to save millions of lives worldwide.

Source-Medindia