{"id":345495,"date":"2025-12-13T01:28:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T01:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/345495\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T01:28:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T01:28:18","slug":"promising-results-emerge-from-blood-tests-that-screen-for-50-cancers-at-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/345495\/","title":{"rendered":"Promising results emerge from blood tests that screen for 50 cancers at once"},"content":{"rendered":"

New findings suggest blood tests still being assessed are showing promising results for early cancer screenings, especially when it comes to detecting more cancers at earlier stages when treatment is more likely to be successful.<\/p>\n

Finding the perfect early screening test for cancer remains a persistent challenge for the health industry. But new findings suggest that blood tests still being assessed are showing promising results when it comes to detecting cancers at earlier stages.<\/p>\n

Multi-cancer early detection tests are blood tests that look for DNA fragments that cancers can release into the bloodstream. The tests are abbreviated as MCED.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese blood tests are looking for multiple different types of cancer in the blood at the same time,\u201d said Dr. Rebecca Kaltman, medical director of the Inova Saville Cancer Screening and Prevention Center at the Inova Schar Cancer Institute in Fairfax, Virginia.<\/p>\n

Only five tests designed to detect early stage cancer have been approved by the U.S. Preventative Task Force: mammograms for breast cancer, colonoscopies for colon cancer, Pap smears for cervical cancer, prostate-specific antigens, or PSA tests for prostate cancer, and low-dose CT scans for lung cancer.<\/p>\n

As the other 100 or so cancers \u2014 including pancreatic, liver, ovarian and others \u2014 don\u2019t have reliable scanning tests, they are often found by the time they have spread and are more difficult to treat.<\/p>\n

Studies show approximately 70% of cancer deaths result from types of cancer that do not have an early screening test.<\/p>\n

More than 800 participants from Schar were enrolled in the national Pathfinder II study of the Galleri<\/a> test, which is made by Grail.<\/p>\n

A similar MCED test, Cancerguard,<\/a> is also seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. That test is made by Exact Sciences.<\/p>\n

Are the tests accurate? What about false positives?<\/p>\n

When a patient has an MCED test, \u201cIt will come back as either positive or negative, and if it\u2019s positive it will say a cancer signal was detected,\u201d Kaltman said.<\/p>\n

The Galleri test generally suggests one or two sites from which the cancer may be originating, which will guide further follow-up testing to determine whether a positive finding is accurate.<\/p>\n

As with other early screening methods, a positive result does not mean a person has cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a mammogram is done and there\u2019s concern about it, the vast majority of the time that concern ends up not being cancer,\u201d Kaltman said. \u201cAbout 15 to 30% of time, depending on the literature that you see, it will be cancer \u2014 so that\u2019s what we call the positive predictive value of the test.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, in clinical trials, \u201cGalleri had a 62% chance of when it came back positive, that it was actually diagnosing a cancer,\u201d Kaltman said.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if an MCED does come back negative, that doesn\u2019t mean a person doesn\u2019t have cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very important that anybody who has this test undergoes routine screening \u2014 colonoscopy, age-appropriate mammography, et cetera,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Future clinical trials and research, likely before FDA approval, will look at the effects of test errors, as well as whether MCEDs actually help patients live longer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have a false positive, or something comes back positive that we can\u2019t clarify, that can cause a lot of anxiety,\u201d Kaltman said.<\/p>\n

For the FDA-approved prostate cancer test, \u201cWe were picking up a lot of cancers that ended up probably not impacting somebody\u2019s longevity. And individuals were subjected to invasive surgery with complications that they might not have had to go through, because it wasn\u2019t going to impact their longevity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaltman said current clinical studies are evaluating how valuable MCEDs are in extending people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre we catching cancers that we need to catch early \u2014 the ones that are aggressive and need to be detected early, to have better outcomes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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