Blood tests to detect cancer
Blood tests to detect cancer The Daily Telegraph today has an article about the development of a blood test that will detect breast cancer at an early stage. It says:
’ this new test focuses on detecting simultaneous and subtle changes in the spectrum of proteins in the blood stream caused when the immune system begins to fight a cancer.’
Obviously this will be a lot less intrusive than the current tests and better than mammograms for younger women. The link is
telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/04/nblood04.xml
I just hope they bring it in quickly!
Could be a big breakthrough for lots of cancers I thought it was good that this test might work against other types of cancers as well, since some, like melanoma, have fairly poor odds.
Also, it would be great if the number of women diagnosed with secondaries could be reduced, since scientists seem to be making much more progress against non-toxic treatments for early breast cancer than they are making against secondary breast cancer. They are developing vaccines to stimulate the immune system against certain typical cancer traits, but this seems to only work if the patient is at the ‘no evidence of disease’ stage (such as after treatment for primary breast cancer). Some cancers, however, are inoperable by the time they are noticed.