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New study could completely change how we diagnose cancer patients
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New study could completely change how we diagnose cancer patients

While we are still learning best treat cancerdoctors have become better at detecting it in its early stages. This is due to specific cancer markers, cells that often appear when invasive cancer cells are present in the body. But a new study could disprove all that.

Aneuploid cells are a common clue doctors look for when looking for invasive breast cancer. These cells have an abnormal number of chromosomes, and many believe this imbalance is what helps cancer spread and evade the body’s immune system.

However, a new study by researchers at the University of Texas and Baylor College of Medicine in Texas found that these cancer markers might also be present even when the cancer is not.

MRI of lung cancerImage source: utah51 / Adobe

THE the researchers published their results in the magazine Naturewriting that they discovered aneuploid cells in breast tissue samples from 49 healthy women. This discovery is concerning for several reasons: the most important is that it changes what we thought we understood about this invasive cancer.

If these cells are not actually cancer markers and also appear in healthy tissue, then doctors will need to find another way to detect breast cancer early. Overall, this discovery has huge implications in the field of breast cancer, as well as several other types of cancer.

Researchers were quick to note that these findings don’t mean everyone is walking around with precancers. However, they caution that we need to establish larger studies to help us understand the implications of developing cancer so that we can better determine when and how cancer starts in different individuals.

It is possible that this particular approach will also reveal these cancer markers in other parts of the body. All of this could hopefully lead to a better understanding of creation new cancer treatment options.