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The insidious thing about cancer is that the earlier it is found, the better it can be treated.
However, not all tumors are detected in time in preventive medical check-ups.
The first results of a study are now giving hope: A blood test should help to detect cancer before the patients develop symptoms.
Now, for the first time, results from the Galleri test have been sent back to patients and their doctors to support cancer screening and necessary treatment, the Guardian reports.
In the coming year, the results of a large-scale study with 165,000 test persons are to be presented.
As part of a Pathfinder study, a study evaluating the implementation of an earlier version of the test in clinical practice, the blood test was offered to 6,621 adults aged 50 and older, the report said.
As a result, dozens of new cases of the disease were discovered, many cancers were still in their early stages, and almost three quarters were forms that are not routinely screened.
A possible cancer was found in 92 subjects.
According to the report, further tests confirmed tumors or blood cancers in 35 people - 1.4 percent of the study group.
Few false positives
Further analysis showed that the blood test was negative in 99.1 percent of the cancer-free people - that is, only a small proportion of healthy subjects showed a false positive result.
About 38 percent of the subjects who tested positive actually had cancer.
The test identified 19 tumors in tissues such as the breast, liver, lungs and colon, but also ovarian and pancreatic cancer: cancers that are usually only discovered at a late stage and have poor survival rates.
"I think what's exciting about this new paradigm and concept is that a lot of these cancers are cancers that don't have standard screening," said Deb Schrag, lead investigator on the study at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, on Sunday at the meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Paris, as quoted by the Guardian.
The test is not yet ready for population-wide screening and people must continue to use standard cancer screening while technology improves.
"But this is an indication of what the future might hold with a really very different approach to cancer screening."
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