New blood test can predict breast cancer five years before it develops
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have devised a revolutionary blood test that could predict breast cancer in women five years before it develops.
Lead researcher of the team, Rasmus Bo, said, “It is not perfect, but it is truly amazing that we can predict breast cancer years into the future.”
While current mammograms offer a 75 per cent accuracy rate, the new blood test would offer 80 per cent accuracy. Plus mammograms can only detect the cancer in a person who has already developed it.
Published in the journal Metabolomics, the 20 year study saw 57,000 participants take part, with a smaller group of 800 women being divided into two groups, those who developed breast cancer and those who didn’t.
Metabolic profiles were built and blood samples were analysed in the women who had developed breast cancer. This allowed them to determine which patients were at risk of the cancer.
The aim of the research was to develop a screening tool that was much more effective than mammograms. There are issues with mammograms as they can give a false positive result; and detection in women with dense breast tissue is harder.
Despite mammograms being the current preferred method of detecting breast cancer, Cancer Council Australia says that they can also cause harm due to overdiagnosis.
“Overdiagnosis occurs because mammography cannot accurately distinguish between potentially fatal cancers and less harmful cancers.”
The innovative blood tests could see a drop in the number of women diagnosed with latter stage cancers, which have a lower success rate for treatment.
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