A combination of liquid biopsy screening tests and conventional screening practices could present a more complete oncology picture, according to a study published in Science.
Researchers studied the effectiveness of liquid biopsy testing in 9,911 women without a family history of cancer. Researchers tested each woman with the DETECT-A blood test and followed that test with PET-CT imaging, achieving a 99.6 percent specificity rate.
The blood test initially detected the following cancers: lymphomas (two), colorectal (two), appendix (one), uterine (two), thyroid (one), kidney (one), lung (nine), breast (one), ovary (six) and unknown primary (one). Seventeen of the cancers were first detected in an early stage. Standard follow-up screening detected an additional 24 cancers. When combined, cancers detected by either the blood test or standard screening accounted for more than half of the 96 cancers detected during the study.
Researchers surveyed the patients, who said the blood test did not dissuade them from also using traditional screening methods.
Lead report author Anne Marie Lennon, PhD, said, "This study suggests that a multicancer blood test can be a complementary and additive to standard of care screening and may be a good strategy for increasing early detection of cancer."
Read the entire report here.