health

Blood test finds cancers before standard diagnosis: study

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By CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN

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This is very encouraging news. If it can be done cheaply, it will save a lot of lives.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

For those that want to see the study

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17316-z

It is promising, but not in a condition to be used as it is right now. The test has a good sensitivity of around 95%, so it would detect 19 out of 20 cases of these types of cancer even without symptoms. The problem is that its specificity is only from 92 to 98%, this is very important because it is supposed to be used on healthy patients so a lot of tests would be performed. If for example 1000 patients undergo the test, 20 to 80 of them would give a positive result even if no cancer would be found later, those 20 to 80 patients would be under the suspicion of having a hidden cancer growing without a real need. And if the patients get one test every year as part of a normal health check the probability of getting a false positive would increase with every year.

Still, it is a very good development based on a type of analysis that get cheaper and cheaper every year, if it is gets tuned up to avoid false positives it may very well become the standard of care for people having risk factors for cancer.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

VERY encouraging news! Maybe we will be able to eliminate all cancers in the future. But we still won't be able to cure the common cold yet : )

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