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Blood test detects cancer 3 years before diagnosis

2025-06-10 21:22:00, Shëndeti CNA

Blood tests could detect evidence of cancer three years earlier than the disease would be diagnosed, a new study says.

The test — called the Multi-Cancer Early Detection (MCED) test — looks for genetic material shed by tumors into the bloodstream.

The test detected cancer DNA circulating in the blood of some patients up to three and a half years before their cancer diagnosis, according to results recently published in the journal Cancer Discovery.

"Detecting cancers years before their clinical diagnosis could help provide a more favorable outcome for the treatment of the disease," said lead researcher Nickolas Papadopoulos, professor of oncology at the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

"Of course, we need to determine the appropriate clinical follow-up after a positive test for such cancers," he added in a press release.

For the study, researchers evaluated blood samples collected for a large-scale, federally funded research project focused on heart disease.

The team used the MCED test to compare 26 study participants who were diagnosed with cancer within six months of taking the blood sample, with 26 similar participants who did not develop cancer.

Eight of the 52 blood samples tested positive for MCED, and these eight people were diagnosed with cancer within four months of the sample being taken, the results showed.

Three of them had colon cancer and one each had pancreatic, rectal, lung, breast or liver cancer.

Looking further into the past, the researchers took blood samples for six of the eight patients that had been taken three to three and a half years before their cancer diagnosis.

What was found in four of those earlier samples showed that those patients' cancer could have been detected years earlier.

"This study shows the promise of MCED tests in detecting cancer very early," lead researcher Dr. Bert Vogelstein said in a press release.

Larger studies are needed to confirm these findings, but the results show that this type of blood test could greatly help catch cancer at an earlier, more survivable stage, the researchers said.

The researchers also noted that detecting cancer three or more years before diagnosis will require blood tests that are 50 times more sensitive than those used to detect cancer six months before diagnosis./ CNA