8 common cancers could be detected early with $500 blood test

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A simple-to-take test that tells if you have a tumor lurking, and even where it is in your body, is a lot closer to reality—and may cost only $500.

The new test, developed at Johns Hopkins University, looks for signs of eight common types of cancer. It requires only a blood sample and may prove inexpensive enough for doctors to give during a routine physical.

The test, detailed [January 18] in the journal Science, could be a major advance for “liquid biopsy” technology, which aims to detect cancer in the blood before a person feels sick or notices a lump.

That’s useful because early-stage cancer that hasn’t spread can often be cured.

For their test, Hopkins researchers looked at blood from 1,005 people with previously diagnosed ovarian, liver, stomach, pancreatic, esophageal, colorectal, lung, or breast cancer.

Their test searches for a combination of eight cancer proteins as well as 16 cancer-related genetic mutations.

The test was best at finding ovarian cancer, which it detected up to 98 percent of the time. It correctly identified a third of breast cancer cases and about 70 percent of people with pancreatic cancer, which has a particularly grim outlook.

The chance of a false alarm was low: only seven of 812 apparently healthy people turned up positive on the test.

Read full, original post: A Cheap and Easy Blood Test Could Catch Cancer Early

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