New Blood Test May Foresee Risk of Breast Cancer

 A new blood test claims to be better than mammograms for the early detection (and possibly the prevention) of breast cancer. 

So far, it’s only been tested and validated with a single cohort of 838 Danish women. The work was published in the journal, Metabolomics last month. Researchers are always looking for new biomarkers that can help with early detection, but these efforts have been rewarded with limited success. 

Detecting Breast Cancer Risk

In hopes of a more comprehensive approach, scientists turned to a method adapted from food science, where it’s used to control complex industrial processes. They analyzed all the compounds contained in a blood sample, instead of examining a single biomarker. 

The more measurements analyses contain, the better the model handles complex problems. By doing so, the team created what they call a biocontour—a complex pattern of pertinent information both biological and phenotypic (that’s the observable stuff, as opposed to genotypic). Their approach doesn't reveal anything about the importance of individual biomarkers. Instead, it focuses on the importance of the interactions among them

New Study: Blood Test Shows Risk of Breast Cancer

This entire pattern is what predicts the cancer. Researchers tested this biocontour method on a single cohort of 400 women who volunteered to give plasma samples in 1997 as part of much larger Danish Cancer Society study.

The women analyzed were cancer-free when they first examined, but had been diagnosed with breast cancer 2 to 7 years after providing their first sample for the study. The team also examined data from 400 women who hadn't developed cancer. 

They created a metabolic blood profile (the amount of products of metabolism in the blood) for each of the samples, which had been stored for nearly 20 years in liquid nitrogen. Researchers claim the method is better than mammography, which can only be used when the disease has already occurred. 

Future of Predicting Breast Cancer

This study is not the end all, be all, but an amazing breakthrough to potentially predicting breast cancer much faster in the future. 

The biocontour can predict if there’s an increased risk that breast cancer will develop in the patient 2 to 5 years after the sample is taken—and with a sensitivity of 80 percent.