Researchers at Johns Hopkins University helped develop a blood test that can detect cancer before the patient becomes symptomatic.
The test, which is still in development, will not be ready for widespread use for some time, has identified cancers that other screening methods have missed.
However, it also produced false positives and false negatives.
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In the fight against cancer, time is everything. Early detection of the disease can mean the difference between life and death, so that screening technology becomes more accurate and more lives can be saved. Aside from the actual treatment of the disease, the timing with which it is discovered is the most important variable in determining a patient’s outcome.
Now researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a blood test that they say could help detect cancer before patients even start to experience symptoms. It would be the ultimate screening tool, and is the subject of a new research paper published in the journal Science.
The new type of blood test is not exactly ready for the general public, but the first results are promising. Researchers say that when applied to a set of blood samples and a standard screening method, the system was able to detect 100% more cancers than the typical screening procedure alone could do. It sounds like really incredible news, but there is a catch.
The new blood test, while powerful, is not as accurate as doctors would probably prefer. In fact, he actually missed more cancers than he found, which means that if used as the sole screening method, it would be considerably insufficient. However, the so-called “liquid biopsies” still look incredibly promising as an additional screening method and, as technology becomes more and more precise, it may become a first-line screening option.
For the study, the researchers recruited around 10,000 women aged 65 to 75. None of the women had a history of cancer. Over the course of a year, women were routinely screened using the blood test and traditional screening measures. Ultimately, 96 of the participants were diagnosed with cancer. Typical screening methods – such as mammograms – accounted for 24 of the diagnoses, while the blood test identified 26 of the cancers. The remaining 46 cases were discovered in various other ways unrelated to the study.
Thus, the test has proven useful for a large number of patients. Its good. However, it also produced a number of false positives that led some women to undergo additional tests that were ultimately unnecessary.
There is obviously work to be done here. Researchers are quickly pointing out that this system is not something that you are going to see in your doctor’s office next week … or even next year. Once the test is to a point where its creators are confident in its ability to save lives, it will still have to get a boost from the FDA.
Image source: Pius Koller / imageBROKER / REX / Shutterstock
Mike Wehner has reported on technology and video games for the past decade, covering the latest news and trends in virtual reality, wearable clothing, smartphones and future technologies.
Most recently, Mike was a technical writer for the Daily Dot and has been featured on USA Today, Time.com and countless other websites and print. His love of
the story is just behind his addiction to gambling.
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