Stomach Cancer Symptoms Biography
Source(google.com.pk)
A simple test that analyzes the chemical signature of a patient's exhaled breath could help diagnose stomach cancer, according to new research by scientists from Israel and China reported online in the British Journal of Cancer this week.
The researchers hope the breath test will offer an easier screening tool than endoscopy, where a specially trained medical professional looks at the inside of the stomach via a tube inserted down the patient's gullet, and sometimes also retrieves a biopsy sample of the stomach lining.
Senior author Hossam Haick, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, says in a press statement:
"The promising findings from this early study suggest that using a breath test to diagnose stomach cancers, as well as more benign complaints, could be a future alternative to endoscopies - which can be costly and time consuming, as well as unpleasant to the patient."
He cautions, however, that the findings of the pilot study are still at "an early stage", and serve more to confirm the idea that a breath test for stomach cancer is worth investigating further.
"Indeed, we're already building on the success of this study with a larger-scale clinical trial," says Haick.
Haick has been studying the effectiveness of nanoparticle sensors as a way to detect minute traces of disease biomarkers for a while. The sensors use materials that are thousands of times smaller than the thickness of human hair, and capable of detecting just a handful of molecules.
In 2011, the British Journal of Cancer reported how a nanosensor "nose" developed by Haick and his team successfully distinguished patients with head and neck or lung cancer from healthy controls by analyzing patterns of molecules in their exhaled breath.
For this latest pilot study, the researchers used nanomaterial-based sensors to analyze breath samples from 130 patients who had undergone endoscopy, some with biopsy. 37 of the patients had been diagnosed with stomach cancer, 32 had ulcers, and 61 had less severe stomach complaints.
