How Blood Tests Could Change the Process of Lung Cancer Screenings
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force changed its recommendations for lung cancer screening last year to expand testing to more smokers.
A recent study funded by the National Cancer Institute finds that a blood test can provide a better way to identify who needs lung cancer screening.
The published research shows that a blood-based biomarker panel combination significantly improves lung cancer risk assessment compared with the previous criteria established by the USPSTF.
To conduct the study, primarily led by researchers from Massachusetts, investigators used predictive models based on metabolic profiles in blood to better understand how the presence of lung cancer can cause changes in blood metabolites.
Researchers then screened thousands of blood specimens from 25 patients with non–small cell lung cancer, and 54 patient blood samples obtained before cancer diagnosis to show the accuracy of model predictions.
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