Scientists have discovered that simple blood tests may diagnose asymptomatic breast cancer, thus increasing the possibility of treatment.
Health officials have made important progress in the detection of breast cancer and other types of cancer as well. According to recent studies, testing the blood for metals could indicate traces of breast cancer before it develops and becomes a serious threat.
Researchers used procedures that are usually applied to analyze changes in climate and planetary formation and used those procedures to figure out how our body handles metals.
This study helped experts to show how modifications in the composition of zinc is detected in the breast tissue of a man or woman and how breast cancer can be detected early by the identification of its biomarker.
Specialists say that high levels of zinc in the bloodstream is an indicator of cancer cells, thus the simple analysis of a person’s blood can detect breast cancer easier than a mammogram or an X-ray. This helps also in the treatment of cancer in its early stages and could save countless lives.
This exact method can also be applied towards the detection of other metals in the bloodstream that can pick up other types of cancer.
Officials hope that this procedure will be used at a national scale in the detection of the disease, due to the fact that it is a simple, cheaper and less painful method than other procedures used in detection or treatment of cancers.
As experts explained, zinc can be found in light forms and heavy forms in our blood and breast tissue picks up this metal and releases it into the bloodstream.
Cancer cells are known to absorb a large quantity of the zinc that can be found in the blood, especially the light form it, thus pointing to the fact that women who may have this disease have higher levels of heavy zinc in their bloodstream.
Researchers say that this procedure will be available in the next five years and it is likely that women who have inherited these genes will be the first to benefit from this test.
Statistics have shown that breast cancer kills more than half a million people every year and this disease is the most common in Britain, 50.000 women being diagnosed every year to have this type of cancer. Breast cancer is the second most deadly among women, killing almost 1,000 of them a month. The first type of cancer that makes more victims annually is lung cancer.
