According to a study published on Tuesday, blood tests have been shown to detect five years of cancer before diseases can be detected using traditional diagnostic methods.
Developed by a Sino-US startup, the test found cancer in 91 percent of people who showed no symptoms when a blood sample was collected, but researchers diagnosed with stomach, esophagus, colon, lung, or liver cancer after one to four years. did. Reported in Nature communication.
“The immediate focus is to test people at high risk based on family history, age, or other known risk factors,” said co-author Kun Zhang, head of the bioengineering department at the University of California San Diego and an equity holder in genome generics at Singlera , Which developed the test.
Early detection of cancer is very important because survival is greatly increased when the disease can be treated in its early stage and the tumor can be removed, whether with surgery, with drugs or with radiation.
To date, however, few effective early screening tests are available.
Researchers examined blood samples of more than 600 individuals enrolled in a 10-year health survey of 120,000 people in China, conducted between 2007 and 2017. The monitoring program included regular blood samples.
For the 191 cancer patients, scientists used the new test to analyze blood samples taken up to four years ago.
They separately detected cancer – with 88 percent accuracy – in 113 patients who had already been diagnosed when blood samples were collected.
The technique, developed over a decade, is designed to detect asymptomatic disease based on a biological process called DNA methylation analysis, which screens for specific DNA signatures for various cancers.
More large-scale studies are needed over a longer period to confirm the ability of the test to detect early cancer, the authors cautioned.
Half of the 32 authors either work for Singlera Genomics are co-inventors of patents related to trial or hold equity in the company.
Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, with about 10 million deaths a year.
According to the World Health Organization, in 2001, 1 from lung cancer There were 7 million deaths, stomach cancer, 72,000, stomach cancer, 3,000, liver cancer es2000, and esophageal cancer.
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