Monday, June 10, 2013

Blood Test a Possibility for Colon Cancer Screening

For the field of cancer analysis, an efficient blood evaluation for colon melanoma would be an exposure. Currently, the condition is medically diagnosed through stool blood test and distressing colonoscopies, but the dream is to be able to find genetic signs predictive of such malignancies in order to get intervene early or follow sufferers in their treatment.
An analysis released Friday in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics indicates that a blood evaluation for melanoma of the colon could be on the horizon. But the analysis is still preliminary and the evaluation is not currently recommended as an examining tool, said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society.  The life-time risk of developing colon melanoma is 1 in 20, and men are a little bit more likely to get it than women, according to the America Cancer Group. In 2013, it is expected to cause more than 50,000 deaths.

The Study

Researchers at Genomictree, Inc., and the Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea, first went on a "search mission" to find genes that could be related to colon melanoma tissues, Lichtenfeld said. They compared growth tissues illustrations from sufferers to non-tumor tissues, and identified candidate genes that could be signs for melanoma of the colon. They targeted on one for further analysis, a tagging called SDC2.
Then, scientists took blood illustrations from 12 colon cancer sufferers with various levels of melanoma, to look for that gene. They found that this gene was present, and could be identified, in the patients' blood. In these sufferers, the gene was predictive for melanoma of the colon.

Bigger Picture

The ultimate goal of this line of analysis is to find a blood evaluation that would either find out cancer early or help doctors follow sufferers in their treatment to see how it's working, Lichtenfeld said. This analysis has exposed that this particular gene may be a tagging that could be useful in either following melanoma of the colon sufferers, or possibly defining melanoma of the colon early and saving lives, he said. Eventually, however, doctors want to be able to recognize a lesion before it becomes melanoma, Lichtenfeld said. The authors of this analysis not claim that this blood evaluation will do that. It's unknown whether this particular evaluation would find out melanoma of the colon early enough to save way of life or prevent people from developing the disease, Lichtenfeld said. More analysis needs to be done.

Other Candidates

This isn't the only potential tagging for melanoma of the colon that a blood evaluation could pick up. There are other genes that other analysis groups are looking at, too. Research authors had written that their results are similar to those of the SEPT9 evaluation for colon melanoma. SEPT9 is a gene that has also been associated with the scenario. A 2011 analysis in the publication BMC Drugs exposed the potential for that gene to serve as a tagging in a blood evaluation for colon melanoma - but this analysis is not specified either. "No efficient company is indicating that either of these tests be used as examining evaluation for melanoma of the colon," Lichtenfeld said. The SEPT9 evaluate is being marketed with claims that it could alternative a colonoscopy, but the America Cancer Group does not recommend it presently, Lichtenfeld said.

Source: http://bit.ly/1bnKh0D

No comments:

Post a Comment