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A new breath test could “revolutionize” care pancreatic cancer Patients, experts have said.
A trial is to assess the effectiveness of the world’s first breath test DiseaseWhich is very difficult to identify in the initial stage.
pancreas cancer UK, which is funding StudySaid that the launch of the trial was “the most important step towards a life-saving breakthrough in 50 years”.
The vague symptoms of the disease, including back pain and indigestion, mean that the disease is often not detected until it has spread to other parts of the body.
Recent audit of pancreatic cancer England And wales found that most patients with pancreas cancer are diagnosed at a late stage – 62 per cent of patients in England and 65 per cent of patients in Wales are diagnosed at stage four.
Survival rates for this type of cancer are particularly poor – around 22 per cent of people in England do not survive 30 days after diagnosis, compared to 21 per cent in Wales.
Now scientists at Imperial College London are hoping to get a handle on the disease with a new breath test.
It will be tested among 6,000 patients with unknown diagnoses at 40 sites in England, Wales and Scotland.
If it proves effective, it is hoped the test could be implemented in GP surgeries within five years, meaning patients could be diagnosed sooner while treatment is more effective.
The larger trial follows a smaller study of 700 patients over two years, the results of which were “promising.”
The test is used to detect the combination of “volatile organic compounds” present in breath.
Thousands of these compounds circulate in the bloodstream and are filtered when the blood reaches the lungs and then breathed out, the charity said.
It says these changes are evident even when the cancer is in the early stages of the disease.
By isolating unique combinations of these compounds it can be used to detect whether a person has pancreatic cancer, with results available to GPs in just three days.
Currently, patients with suspected pancreatic cancer are sent for a scan, or sent to hospital for further investigation.
Diana Jupp, chief executive of Pancreatic Cancer UK, which is providing £1.1 million of funding for the study, said: “The breath test has the potential to revolutionize the early detection of pancreatic cancer.
“Without a doubt, this is the most significant step towards a life-saving breakthrough in 50 years.
“While this exciting new technology still requires further years of development before it can be put into the hands of GPs across the country, thousands of patients with unknown diagnoses will now help refine it in the real world.
“This is the first pancreatic cancer breath test to reach a national clinical trial of this scale. That in itself makes this a moment of real, concrete hope.
“For decades the most deadly common cancer has been seen as a major challenge to solve, but we are determined to push the boundaries of what is deemed possible.”
Professor George Hanna, Head of the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London – who is leading the project, said: “If our findings from the early phase of the breath test study can be validated in a population of patients with unknown diagnoses, it has huge potential to influence clinical practice and pancreatic cancer referral pathways.
“The funding announced today means we can now rapidly advance to that patient validation study phase, which is a very exciting next step for us. We look forward to seeing how the trial performs in this group of patients with suspected cancer.”