The author discusses how this test should be included with a yearly physical to let the person be aware if there are autoantibodies to go get checked out. I agree completely with her for the autoantibodies can be a first sign of cancer developing and by stopping it while it is starting would save many lives. This is also promising for it allows a marker that is find in people that have something wrong in their body know there is something wrong. There is also no evidence of there being auto antibodies in healthy individuals. So either way there may be cancer or something else wrong in either case the patient can get checked and potentially get cured before anything happens.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Early Warning For Cancer?
In the article An Early Warning System For Cancer written by Jennifer Chu she discusses a new potential early warning system for cancer. The research consists of testing to see if there are autoantibodies in the bloodstream. Autoantibodies are agents in the bloodstream that attack the body itself found in cases when patients with tumors or have been recently diagnosed with cancer. There is however no strong link proven yet explains the author but the signs are there. The most interesting part about the use of marking autoantibodies is that none were found in healthy patients. However they were in about 20-30% of patients with cancer. This may not seem significant but with more research one may know that having autoantibodies in ones system could be a signal to get checked for cancer. The research is promising and even with not a significant percentage of cancer patients having the autoantibodies in them there is a few percent of people that can be saved because of it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is an interesting idea, however whenever I hear something like this I become very skeptical. My tendency is always to question things. Scientists always seem to find new discoveries that could cure or help people. In this case, they would be able to find cancer because it actually forms, but is this really true? Perhaps it is true, and that would be a great thing. But if it's not true, then they're just giving people false hope which could be even more painful than not knowing at all. This occurs often when scientists later find what they thought to be true was just a fluke. Perhaps scientists shouldn't publish their findings to the public until there is more research on the subject in order to decide if it will work or if it won't work.
ReplyDeleteI think this article points out a truth about scientific research. Sometimes with research the findings are really small but have tons of implications and impact. Its all about what small things really mean on a larger scale.So, the fact that autoantibodies arent found in non cancerous patients and 20-30% of cancer patients may seem small but it probably means something. Especially with cancer survival percentages matter. They can be the difference between life and death so I think you were right to say that 20-30% is significant.
ReplyDelete