A new and simple blood test which may predict early onset of breast cancer has been discovered by researchers working at Dublin City University (DCU).
The test has so far been tried on about 100 older women with and without breast cancer who were seen by BreastCheck at Dublin's Mater hospital. It has been found to predict breast cancer with a 90 per cent degree of accuracy.
The other 10 per cent, in which the test detected nothing unusual, had very early-stage breast cancer.
Dr Brendan O'Connor, a neurochemist working at DCU who made the discovery, said he stumbled on a new protein or marker for breast cancer completely by accident when looking for a brain enzyme in blood.
When he went to identify what the protein was it emerged cancer laboratories in the US had identified it in tissue as being associated with very early-stage breast cancer.
"We realised we were detecting it in blood," he said.
There appeared, he said, to be a point before the marker for breast cancer turned up in blood and "it seems to be very early-stage and really what we want to do now is find out how early this is so we need more samples".
The test will now be carried out on more women, particularly younger women.
Dr O'Connor hopes the blood test, which will need more work before it could be brought to the market, could play a significant role in the detection of early-stage breast cancer in future.
It has already been found to be effective in testing for a range of subtypes of breast cancer.
"In broad terms what we're really hoping is that we're going to very shortly have a very sensitive test for early-stage breast cancer, something that can be done in 15 minutes," Dr O'Connor said.
He envisages the test will be cheap and easy to use and available in time as a standard test in GPs' surgeries for women of all ages.
Dr O'Connor said breast cancer was less aggressive in older patients and if the test detected it in them it was likely to be even more useful in detecting the disease in younger women, where the disease is often in a more aggressive form.
If it was proven the test was diagnosing cancer accurately, there was a possibility people could move away from using mammograms and ultrasounds in the detection of breast cancer, he said.