Should this technique be further developed as a medical standard, we might be able to detect breast cancer at least 5 years early.
A group of Danish researchers has just discovered a more innovative and revolutionary way of determining whether you're a potential breast cancer patient many years before it can possibly happen, and it can be accomplished by merely drawing blood.
Led by Professor Lars Ove Dragsted, who works in the biomedicine department of University of Copenhagen, the simple, quick exam has an accuracy of 80%, which is around 5% higher than a mammogram, which is currently the gold standard for finding breast cancer. Moreover, drawing blood is less painful than mammography where breasts are usually pressed on a plate. The current exam has also been criticized for producing false-positive results, forcing women to undergo treatments needlessly.
For the study, the team worked with more than 55,000 patients over a period of 2 decades. At different times between the period, the researchers drew blood from all women and obtained a smaller sample composed of 800 women. They were then divided into two groups: those who remained healthy within the study and women who developed cancer within 7 years after their first blood sample was collected.
Using the data from the comparison, the researchers were able to build a metabolic profile for those at risk of the disease, which was also used in a test conducted on a different set of women in 1997.
Although this isn't the first attempt to try to predict a potential breast cancer diagnosis using blood, the previous ones tend to look at certain biomarkers when, in fact, all should be considered, according to the team's leader.
The researchers are now working on growing the study to include more women.
Breast cancer remains to be one of the most common cancers and causes of death among women. In the UK alone, breast cancer leads to over 50,000 diagnosed and 11,000 dead.