Hopes of early access to lung cancer test
Lung cancer is Ireland’s greatest killer, with more than 1,500 people dying from the disease every year. Smoking has long been established as the predominant risk factor in the disease, with 90% of cases being attributed directly to tobacco exposure.
The man leading up research into the new blood test, British cancer specialist Professor Tim Eisen, one of the speakers at an international cancer conference in St James’s Hospital in Dublin, has discovered some of the faulty genes that increase the risk of lung cancer.
He has been comparing the DNA of thousands of people, both with and without lung cancer, to identify subtle difference that are linked to the risk of the disease.
“The idea is to identify people at risk of developing lung cancer and treat them before they have developed the disease, not with chemotherapy, but with other drugs,” he said.
He stressed, however, that the risk of people who did not smoke was tiny. “If you don’t smoke, even if you have a strong family history of lung cancer, you are very, very unlikely to develop the disease. You are really not at risk.”
It is known that one in six people who smoke throughout their life will develop lung cancer.
Prof Eisen believes that being able to identify smokers twice or three times as likely to develop the disease could assist doctors in making intensive attempts to get them to quit. Doctors could take a simple blood test from patients that would be used to examine their genetic make up.
“People do want to be tested if they know they know they might be at risk of developing a disease,” he pointed out.
“Nothing would make me happier then to make this entire field of work obsolete by people stopping smoking,” he said.
Prof Eisen believes the genetic test could be available in doctors’ surgeries within 10 years. He also had advice for younger smokers, who might be at an increased risk of developing lung cancer, but do not know it.
“If you stop smoking in your 30s or 40s you get rid of most of the risk of developing lung cancer. Stopping early makes a huge difference to your risk,” he stressed.
