Blood Test Detects Lung Cancer Years Before CT Scans And Radiographic Detection
According to a recent report in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, a blood test has been developed to detect lung cancer years before it is diagnosed. US researchers reported that this test takes blood samples from patients and finds out if they have possibilities to develop non-small-cell cancer in future.
Lung cancer is one of the most common causes of deaths due to cancer. Non-small-cell lung cancer being the most common kind of lung cancer, it has a survival rate of only 5 years on an average, and that too for only 40% of people. According to the researchers of University of Kentucky, profiling of the anti-bodies, when incorporated to comprehensive strategy of screening, can be very powerful in early detection of lung cancer. Attempts have been made to prove the reliability of the test and if it is confirmed, it will become the first blood screening procedure for any type of cancer; after PSA test or prostate specific antigen used to determine the presence of prostate cancer.
Although there are CT scans or computer tomography scans which can find tumors of lung cancer, but these scans have a very high rate of showing false positives. Due to this, many people who are shown positive with CT scans have to undergo the unnecessary painful procedure of biopsy to remove the suspicious lump and later find out that the lump was actually non-cancerous at all.
In most cases, by the time lung cancer is diagnosed or start to show symptoms, it is already too late to treat the disease. According to researchers, a test has been developed which can detect the proteins that the body produces during early formation of tumors in the lungs. The test had been conducted on people who were under treatment for lung cancer. Result showed that it correctly identified 90% of the cases with lung cancer and when conducted on people not suffering from lung cancer, it came up with a very low percentage of false positives.
Blood samples of lung cancer patients taken years before were also tested. The test correctly identified cancer in 4 out of 7 samples taken a year before being diagnosed, and in all samples taken 2, 3 and 4 years earlier. The researchers explained that the lung cancer can be present in a person to as much as 3-4 years before the tumor reaches a size that can be identified by radiographic detection.