AsianScientist (Apr. 17, 2011) – Predicting the metastasis risk in a patient with skin cancer could just be a blood test away, according to a recent publication in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Scientists at Yale University have identified a set of 7 serum biomarkers, all of which were higher in patients with metastatic melanoma than patients with early-stage disease. In fact, 76 percent of patients with early-stage disease had no elevations at all whereas 83 percent of metastatic patients had elevations of at least one marker.
Malignant melanoma, a type of skin cancer, is the fifth most common cancer in men and the seventh most common cancer in women. It is estimated that in 2006, 10,326 Australians were diagnosed with melanoma, making melanoma the fourth most common cancer diagnosed in Australia.
Metastasis is a key prognostic indicator of the disease and the risk of metastasis varies from less than 10 percent for those with stage 1A melanoma, to as high as 70 percent with stage 3C.
Currently, patients with melanoma are typically subjected to a combination of imaging tests, blood tests and physical examinations, but there is no clear consensus on how often these tests should occur or their reliability.
“This finding will need to be confirmed prospectively before it is used in the clinic, but it shows that such testing is possible,” said Harriet Kluger, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Yale University School of Medicine.
The article can be found at: Kluger, HM (2011) Plasma Markers for Identifying Patients with Metastatic Melanoma.
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Source: Yale University.
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