The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) announces that there is a blood screening test that can detect 50 types of cancer in people at increased risk of cancer and in people over 50 years of age.
All that is needed is a simple blood sample, which can then be analyzed within ten days. This early detection test is revolutionary, especially for cancers with dangerous potential and in the early stages, and is already being used extensively in the USA and modern screening methods. The British health system wants to follow suit. The test is already in use as a multi-cancer screening test in the US, pointing to improved treatment options and prognosis. The public health potential is positive because the false positive rate is only 0.5 percent; out of 200 tests, only one falsely indicates cancer.
According to this, a blood sample from affected persons contains DNA cancer traces present in the blood in traces as cell-free DNA of cancer cells, more or less of the so-called cfDNA, depending on the type of cancer. Tumor cells of the prostate are more difficult to recognize by the test because they contain less cfDNA. The so-called methylation pattern of the respective type of cancer is always different and has a different significance.
Nevertheless, the study showed that the performance of the test is good. The test can detect cancer signals, is very rarely false-positive, and has a high sensitivity of 67.6 percent on average, with the detection rate increasing with increasing cancer stage. When the first symptoms appear in the fourth stage of cancer, it is above average at 90.1 percent.
The test responds very well to 12 types of cancer, which account for almost 70 percent of all cancer deaths. Colorectal cancer, bladder cancer, oesophageal cancer, liver and lung tumors, and other, even rarer cancers can be detected at an early stage.
Source: www.heilpraxisnet.de