Friends, the Corona Virus COVID 19 has been active all over the world, except that China is having respite from it and is slowly coming back to normalcy . The conditions in UK, USA, Italy, Spain and many more countries are very serious, with India under total lock down the number of cases have been controlled, the cases could have been much higher if there was no lock down.
Today I am writing about one more disease, which for last so many decades have taken the maximum lives throughout the world. Cancer or Big C is a dreaded disease, not just the way it takes lives, but also because detection is not easy, treatment is painful and most expensive too .But despite all measures taken by govt and non govt agencies, awareness about this disease is seems to be very low.
If you go by Indian statstics around 2.5 million in India are said to be affected by Cancer at any given time. Every 10 minutes, one women in India dies of cervical cancer and daily 2500 people die of tobacco related cancer. Some cancers can be cured fully if detected at an early stage. For women the cancer related with breast, cervix and oral, for men oral, lung and stomach can be treated with great success.
But cancer detection is not easy, and symptoms do not always show up early. Most people, specially women, ignore the symptoms and wait till it goes to next stage to seek medical help. The main test for detecting cancer is biopsy. During a biopsy a needle is inserted into the suspicious body part to pull out tissue and then examined to confirm cancer.
Ideally if like other diseases, a blood test could have detected the cancer, then it would be possible to detect the same at early stage. As per latest news soon this will be a reality. Researchers claimed to have developed a blood test which will be able to detect 8 types of cancer early. The cancers that can be detected are ovarian, liver, stomach, pancreatic, oesophageal, bowel, lung and breast cancer. This blood test is called CancerSeek. This test is also called liquid biopsy and works in a way by detecting proteins and DNA released into the blood by cancerous cells. Clinical research suggests the test is as reliable as normal biopsy. However it might take couple of years before it is available for the public, good news is that the break through is achieved.
How does this test work- Cancerous cells release mutated DNA and abnormal proteins into the blood. Since this DNA, and proteins are clearly distinct from the normal healthy cells, it becomes easy to segregate and identify them. The test is so reliable that it can find even one mutation in 10,000 cells. The results have been confirmed by conducting tests on more than 10,000 people, wherein apart from detecting cancer, it also accurately identifies the type of cancer in about 83% of cases.
CancerSeek is extremely significant as a screening test for cancer as otherwise, people will end up doing multiple tests and biopsies to arrive at a diagnosis. A simple blood test, can not only confirm the presence , but also suggest the immediate next step of investigation. Like if bowel cancer is suggested, then a colonoscopy may be done to reconfirm. So this blood will be a game changer in the future in fight against cancer by promoting early detection thus leading to effective treatment.
Currently, the test is being used in large trials in USA, and hopefully in few years span it could become available for the public clinics and diagnostic centres. This will give a bright hope, by using this many people can emerge victorious in the fight against big C.
Friends, I hope you must have found this blog quite informative.
Awaiting your comments/feed backs/views.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
30th Mar 2020.