An AI-powered test can detect three main types of cancer using just a drop of dried blood, a study suggests.
The tool can detect bowel, stomach and pancreatic cancers within minutes, Chinese researchers have found.
It could help reduce undiagnosed cases in least developed countries around the world by up to 55 percent, they said.
Lead author Ruimin Wang from Shanghai Jiao Tong University said: “More than a billion people around the world experience a high rate of missed disease diagnoses.
“This highlights the need for diagnostic tools that show greater accuracy and accessibility.
“Our approach allows for the diagnosis of multiple types of cancer in minutes and at an affordable cost.”
Bowel cancer is now the third most common cancer in Britain, with 41,596 Britons diagnosed in 2021.
It is the UK’s second deadliest cancer, claiming 16,000 lives a year.
There are around 6,500 new cases of stomach cancer annually in the country, while 10,500 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Survival rates for all three are much higher if the cancer is detected earlier, with researchers constantly looking to improve ways of testing for the disease.
Most current blood tests to detect disease use liquid blood to detect cancer markers and are not powerful enough to diagnose any of them individually.
Dr. Chaoyuan Kuang of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who was not involved in the research, said using dried blood could be a game changer.
He said dried blood can be “collected, stored and transported at a much lower cost and with much simpler equipment.”
He said Living Science: “This could help democratize the availability of early cancer detection tests around the world.”
The study, published in Nature Sustainabilityanalyzed the effectiveness of a new test that can screen for the three diseases using the functions of dried blood.
POWERED BY AI
The tool uses artificial intelligence to analyze biomarkers in blood and has been tested in preliminary proof-of-concept experiments.
It identified when a patient had cancer around 82 to 100 percent of the time, the researchers said.
They estimate that the proportion of undiagnosed bowel cancer cases could be reduced from 84 to 29 percent if testing were implemented in less developed countries.
Undiagnosed stomach cancer cases could be reduced from 78 to 57 percent, while pancreas cases could fall from 35 to 9 percent, they said.
But Dr. Kuang said, “We’re probably still years away from being able to offer this test to patients on a widespread basis.”
KNOWING THE SIGNS OF BOWEL CANCER CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE
Bowel cancer is the fourth most common form of the disease in the UK – but the second deadliest, claiming around 16,000 lives a year.
However, it can be cured if diagnosed early.
Fewer than one in ten people survive bowel cancer if it is detected at stage 4 but detected at stage 1 – before it has spread – and more than nine in ten patients will live five years or more.
There are two ways to ensure early diagnosis, screening and awareness of symptoms.
Brits have been put through a postcode lottery when it comes to bowel cancer screening, with tests sent out in Scotland from the age of 50, while people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have to wait until they are 60. years.
That’s why The Sun launched the No Time 2 Lose campaign, calling on the Government to lower the screening age to save thousands of lives a year.
In the summer of 2018, Matt Hancock agreed, in a victory for The Sun and campaigners – but three years later and the 50th screening has still not been widely implemented.
While screening is an important part of early diagnosis, so is knowing the symptoms and taking action if you detect the signs.
The five warning symptoms are:
- Bleeding from the anus or blood in poop
- A change in your normal bathroom habits – going more or less frequently, for example
- Pain or lump in the belly
- Extreme tiredness for no real reason
- Unexplained weight loss
If you’re worried, don’t be embarrassed and speak to your GP – doctors see and deal with bowel problems all the time.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
