interestingengineering.com
New Blood Test Detects Cancer 4 Years Ahead of Symptoms
An international team of scientists has developed a blood test that's still in its trial phases but that's shown strong positive signs of detecting five cancers up to four years before symptoms develop.
Health
If cancer is detected early, the chances of survival increase. So it's good news that an international team of scientists has developed a blood test that can detect five of the most common types of cancers four years before symptoms are picked up by current methods.
The tests can currently find the following cancers: stomach, esophageal, colorectal, lung, and liver cancer.
The study was published in Nature Communications on Tuesday.
In its current formation, the experimental blood test was able to detect cancer in 91% of the asymptomatic samples from healthy volunteers.
It's quite extraordinary, and as Kun Zhang, a bioengineer at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author of the study, said "What we showed is: up to four years before these people walk into the hospital, there are already signatures in their blood that show they have cancer."