New test can predict cancer up to 13 years before disease develops - with 100 per cent accuracy
New test can predict cancer up to 13 years before disease
develops
People who develop cancer have shorter telomeres, the
caps at the end of chromosomes which protect the DNA
By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor
12:00AM BST 01 May 2015
A new test which can predict with 100 per cent accuracy
whether a person will develop cancer up to 13 years in the future, has been
devised by scientists.
Harvard and Northwestern University discovered that tiny
but significant changes are already happening in the body more than a decade
before cancer is diagnosed.
They found that the protective caps on the ends of
chromosomes, which prevent DNA damage, had significantly more wear and tear in
people who went on to develop cancer. In fact, they looked like they belonged
to a person who was 15 years older.
Those caps, known as telomeres, were much shorter than
they should be and continued to get shorter until around four years before the
cancer developed, when they suddenly stopped shrinking. All the people with the
changes went on to develop cancer.
"Understanding this pattern of telomere growth may
mean it can be a predictive biomarker for cancer," said Dr. Lifang Hou,
the lead study author and a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern
University Feinberg School of Medicine.
"Because we saw a strong relationship in the pattern
across a wide variety of cancers, with the right testing these procedures could
be used to eventually diagnose a wide variety of cancers."
Although many people may not want to know that they will
develop cancer in the future, it could allow them to make lifestyle changes to
lower their risk. Stanford University is also working on a project looking at
how telemores can be regrown.
However insurance companies warned that such a test could
push up policy premiums.
Matt Sanders, in charge of protection insurance products
at GoCompare, said people with such a diagnoses could be priced out of the
insurance marker.
“If this test showed 100 per cent probability over a
certain number of years then it could affect premiums. It would be the
equivalent of living in a high theft area for someone looking for home
insurance,” he said.
“Premiums could rise to a point where some people would simply
be priced out. However if it was shown that diagnosing earlier could prevent
cancer then that could bring down premiums.”
Aviva also said that continually monitored advances in
medical sciences ‘to ensure they are reflected in the premiums paid by our
customers, where appropriate.’
In the new study, scientists took multiple measurements
of telomeres over a 13-year period in 792 persons, 135 of whom were eventually
diagnosed with different types of cancer, including prostate, skin, lung and
leukaemia.
Initially, scientists discovered telomeres aged much
faster, indicated by a more rapid loss of length, in individuals who were
developing but not yet diagnosed with cancer.
Telomeres in all the people who went on to develop cancer
looked as much as 15 years older than those of people who were not developing
the disease.
But then scientists found the accelerated aging process
stopped three to four years before the cancer diagnosis.
Telomeres shorten every time a cell divides. The older a
person is, the more times each cell has divided, and the shorter their
telomeres.
Because cancer cells divide and grow rapidly, scientists
would expect the cell would get so short it would self-destruct. But that's not
what happens, scientists discovered.
“We found cancer has hijacked the telomere shortening in
order to flourish in the body,” added Dr Hou.
The team is hoping that if it can identify how cancer
hijacks the cell, then treatments could be developed to cause cancer cells to
self-destruct without harming healthy cells.
The research was published in the online journal
Ebiomedicine.
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