Scientists have discovered high levels of damaged DNA in the blood of women with breast cancer, a finding they say could lead within a few years to a simple blood test that could detect the disease well before it shows up on a mammogram.
Zora Djuric of Wayne State University in Detroit cautioned that at least four more years of studies are needed before such a test becomes available."It's not a test yet, but we are hopeful it will be some day," she said Monday at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Djuric, a professor of internal medicine, said her laboratory discovered a way to measure DNA damage in white blood cells caused by toxins called oxygen free radicals. They found such damage was 40 percent higher on average in newly diagnosed breast cancer patients than in women with no sign of the disease.
"They have something different in their blood . . . and we believe it shows up long before a mammogram would detect breast cancer," she said. It is possible the DNA damage can be detected when there are only a few cancer cells in the body, Djuric said.