A simple urine test will help detect cancers of the gut, stomach and pancreas, or at least the following piece of information suggests so. With a futuristic approach, scientists assert that the presence of key proteins in the urine can allow physicians to identify patients with advanced cancers. The study findings may assist in the detection of these cancers in people who have not yet started to show symptoms of the disease.
This novel test can possibly enhance survival rates, as it detects cancer much earlier than present day methods. In this study, urine samples from patients with upper gastrointestinal cancer were matched with those of cancer-free people. The achieved samples were examined to identify thousands of proteins. After thorough investigations, six particular proteins were found to be supposedly present in 98 percent cancer patients and 90 percent absent in patients without cancer.
“The majority of these cancers are currently diagnosed late where no surgery is possible due to its advanced stage. Earlier diagnosis would mean that curative surgery or chemotherapy would be possible for more patients,†added Dr Holger Husi.
Then, authors narrowed molecules down to the two proteins namely S100A6 and S1009. These proteins seem to be most likely to be in samples from patients with cancer but absent from the other samples. Further attempts are being made to confirm whether people with early stage cancers, which have not yet been diagnosed, have the same levels of proteins present.
The study was published in the journal Proteomics-Clinical Applications.