The medical industry is gearing up for a new era of cancer screening after a study found that a simple blood test can detect multiple types of malignant disease in patients before they show obvious symptoms and even predict its location.
The study, prepared by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Britain, was conducted on more than 6,600 adults aged 50 and over, according to a report by the British newspaper The Guardian.
Dozens of new cases of the disease have been discovered, many of the cancers were in an early stage, and nearly three-quarters of them were forms for which they were not routinely screened.
Changing the rules of the game
It is the first time that the results of the Galleri test, which searches for cancer DNA in the blood, are being returned to patients and their doctors for further research and any necessary treatment.
For its part, the National Health Service in Britain described the new test as a “turning point”, which is expected to announce the results of a large trial that will involve 165,000 people next year.
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Doctors hope the test will save lives by detecting cancer soon enough to make surgery and treatment more effective, but the technology is still in development.
Discover 92 cases
“I think the exciting thing about this new model and concept is that many of these cancers for which we don’t have standard screening,” said Dr Deep Schrag, lead researcher on the study.
In the study, 6,621 adults aged 50 and over underwent a Galleri blood test.
For 6,529 volunteers, the test was negative but detected possible cancer in 92, according to the Guardian.
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Further tests confirmed solid tumors or leukemia in 35 people, or 1.4% of the study group.
The test detected two types of cancer in a woman with breast and endometrial cancers.
It predicts the location of the cancer
In addition to detecting the presence of the disease, the test predicts the location of the cancer, allowing doctors to monitor the follow-up work needed to detect and confirm the cancer.
In this context, Schrag said, “The indication of origin was very helpful in guiding the type of additional work.”
“When the blood test result is positive, it usually takes less than three months to complete the surgeries,” he added.
In addition, the test identified 19 solid tumors in tissues such as breast, liver, lung and colon, but also detected ovarian and pancreatic cancers, which are usually detected at an advanced stage and have poor survival rates.
The rest of the cases were leukemia. Of the 36 cancers detected in total, 14 were in the early stage and 26 disease types had not been routinely screened.
Further analysis found that the blood test was negative for 99.1% of those without cancer, meaning that only a small percentage of healthy people received a false positive result.
In addition, about 38% of those who tested positive had cancer.
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