Researchers say blood test
can detect cancer years before symptoms
By Nicola Davis
The Guardian, July 21, 2020 -- “A blood
test can pick up cancers up to four years before symptoms appear, researchers
say, in the latest study to raise hopes of early detection.
“A team led by researchers in China say
the non-invasive blood test – called PanSeer – detects cancer in 95% of
individuals who have no symptoms but later receive a diagnosis.
“We demonstrated that five types of
cancer can be detected through a DNA methylation-based blood test up to four
years before conventional diagnosis,” the team wrote in the journal Nature Communications.
“They said the test was unlikely to be
predicting cancer but rather picking up on cancerous growths that had not yet
caused symptoms or been spotted by other methods.
“Such tests, known as liquid biopsies,
have become the focus of much research as they offer a non-invasive way to
screen patients.”
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