Catching Pancreatic Cancer Early

(Ivanhoe Newswire) –A simple blood test based on detection of tiny epigenetic may reveal the earliest signs of pancreatic cancer, according to Johns Hopkins researchers.
Researchers say that the findings of their research, if confirmed, could be an important step in reducing mortality from the cancer, which has an overall five year survival rate of less than five percent.
For their study, says Nita Ahuja, M.D., an associate professor of surgery, oncology and urology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and leader of the study, and her colleagues were able to identify two genes, BNC1 and ADAMTS1, which together were detectable in 81 percent of blood samples from 42 people with early-stage pancreatic cancer, but not in patients without the disease or in patients with a history of pancreatitis. By contrast, the commonly used PSA antigen test for prostate cancer only picks up about 20 percent of prostate cancers.
For more information, go to: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/a_simple_blood_test_may_catch_early_pancreatic_cancer
SOURCE: Clinical Cancer Research, October 2013