Test may spot cancer years before symptoms
Alex Matthews-King TOI 12.07.2018
Blood cancers could one day be detected by screening after scientists found signs of their onset etched in the DNA, years before symptoms begin.
Mutations which drastically increase the chances of someone developing acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) are measurable up to five years before it emerges, researchers from University of Cambridge have shown.
They hope to use this window to test interventions to prevent the disease — which can materialise without warning and demand urgent life-saving treatment — from emerging at all. However, more work is needed before a screening programme for AML would be cost-effective and accurate enough to prevent people from wrongly being told they are at risk.
“AML often appears very suddenly in patients, so we were surprised to discover that its origins are generally detectable more than five years before it develops,” said Dr Grace Collord, one of the lead authors of the study published in ‘Nature’.
Researchers used blood samples from 800 patients in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EpiC) which launched in 1992. In this group, 124 of the participants developed AML.
Researchers showed that the more mutations were present at early ages, the higher the risk of AML emerging. THE INDEPENDENT
Alex Matthews-King TOI 12.07.2018
Blood cancers could one day be detected by screening after scientists found signs of their onset etched in the DNA, years before symptoms begin.
Mutations which drastically increase the chances of someone developing acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) are measurable up to five years before it emerges, researchers from University of Cambridge have shown.
They hope to use this window to test interventions to prevent the disease — which can materialise without warning and demand urgent life-saving treatment — from emerging at all. However, more work is needed before a screening programme for AML would be cost-effective and accurate enough to prevent people from wrongly being told they are at risk.
“AML often appears very suddenly in patients, so we were surprised to discover that its origins are generally detectable more than five years before it develops,” said Dr Grace Collord, one of the lead authors of the study published in ‘Nature’.
Researchers used blood samples from 800 patients in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EpiC) which launched in 1992. In this group, 124 of the participants developed AML.
Researchers showed that the more mutations were present at early ages, the higher the risk of AML emerging. THE INDEPENDENT
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