Breast cancer could be detected five years before clinical signs appear in patients thanks to a blood test that could identify the body’s immune responses to tumour cells. That is the claim that has been made about research to be presented at a national cancer conference in Glasgow on Sunday. The study is the work of researchers at Nottingham University’s School of Medicine who focused on chemicals known as antigens.
The researchers correctly identified breast cancer in 37% of blood samples taken from affected patients. Crucially, they were also able to show that there was no cancer in 79% of samples from the control group. The results are considered to be highly encouraging by the group, which says they indicate that it will be possible to detect early breast cancer this way.
Other researchers have urged caution in interpreting these results. “These are clearly very preliminary data,” said Cambridge University cancer epidemiologist Prof Paul Pharoah. “A lot more research would be needed before any claim can be made that this is likely to represent a meaningful advance in the early detection of cancer.”
