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 19 July 2008 15:51 BST

Blood tests to detect lung cancer

Tuesday, 20 May 2008 00:01
Simple blood tests may be able to detect lung cancer

Health In Focus 

  • Future for smokers

    Over the last year tougher restrictions on smoking have been put in place and it is unlikely the changes are going to stop there. Full Story
A simple blood test may be able to detect lung cancer in its earliest stages, according to new research.

It is usually extremely difficult to screen for the cancer but researchers have claimed that they hope to identify a consistent way of determining the presence of the disease by testing for the gene expression of white blood cells.

"We found that the types of genes present in these cells could tell us whether or not cancer was present," explained Anil Vachani, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

The new findings will be presented at the American Thoracic Society's 2008 International Conference in Toronto today.

"CT screening results in the detection of lung nodules in 20 to 60 percent of subjects," said Dr Vachani.

"This high false-positive rate requires patients to undergo extensive follow-up investigations, such as serial CT scans, PET scans or biopsies. This test may be able to obviate the need for such things if it is developed into a large scale diagnostic tool."

Researchers used 44 patients with early stage lung cancer and 52 control subjects who were matched for age, smoking status, gender and race. They then used a number of genetic selections to determine the best methods for detecting the presence of cancer. They found that a 15-gene array had the highest accuracy, at 87 percent.

"These findings suggest that lung cancers interact with circulating white blood cells and change the types of genes that are active in these cells. This finding can be potentially used to develop a non-invasive diagnostic test for patients suspected of having lung cancer," said Dr Vachani.

"A diagnostic test that could more accurately determine the risk of cancer in patients would be extremely valuable and have very important economic implications by reducing unnecessary surgery, biopsies and repeated imaging tests."End of story


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