A new blood test that picks up melanoma in its early stages could help to catch the skin cancer before it turns deadly.
At the moment, melanoma is normally detected by visually scanning the skin. Suspicious-looking moles are cut out and sent for lab testing, but only 30 per cent turn out to be cancerous, while many true cancers are missed.
Now, at Edith Cowan University in Australia and her colleagues have developed a blood test that they hope will allow more accurate detection of melanoma.
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The test works by detecting antibodies that the immune system produces soon after melanoma starts to grow.
Screening tool
In a study of 105 patients with early-stage melanoma and 104 healthy people, the test accurately identified the cancer in 82 per cent of cases.
Picking up melanoma at this early stage is important so that patients can get treated before it spreads, says Ziman. The cure rate is up to 99 per cent when it鈥檚 detected early, compared to 15 to 20 per cent when it has spread, she says.
Because melanoma is often detected late, it currently kills more than 1700 people per year in Australia and New Zealand, which have the highest rates due to high levels of sun exposure.
Ziman鈥檚 team is now planning a three-year clinical trial to compare the accuracy of the blood test with that of the usual visual examination method.
If the blood test is validated, it could be used as a routine screening tool for people at risk of melanoma, including those with fair skin or a family history of the disease, says Ziman. It could also be used to decide whether a suspicious-looking mole should be cut out and tested, she says.
Journal reference: Oncotarget
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