Blood Test Detects Breast Cancer Months Before Relapse

Researchers in UK have developed a test that can detect mutations in blood to reveal risk of breast cancer relapse months before the disease manifests.

Breast cancer reoccurrence in most cases happens within five years of treatment. Relapse is often attributed to initial treatment missing a small group of cancer cells that remain undetected for a while. While persons treated for cancer are always on the lookout for reoccurrence, the spread can occur before a diagnosis is confirmed. Blood tests to check for cancer reoccurrence, also called liquid biopsies, can help detect circulating DNA mutations which increase risk of reoccurrence.

For the study, researchers, who developed the breast cancer blood test and described it in the journal Science Translational Medicine, collected 55 samples from patients with early-stage disease who had received treatment and were potentially cured. They concluded that women whose blood sample contained tumor DNA had 12 times higher risk of relapse compared to those who had no DNA fragments. Most importantly, the blood test was able to detect relapse nearly 8 months before any symptoms were seen.

"We have shown how a simple blood test has the potential to accurately predict which patients will relapse from breast cancer, much earlier than we can currently. We also used blood tests to build a picture of how the cancer was evolving over time, and this information could be invaluable to help doctors select the correct drugs to treat the cancer," said Dr. Nicholas Turner the team leader at The Institute of Cancer Research in London.