Hair test for breast cancer on the horizon

January 27, 2012 –  A HAIR analysis to awning for breast blight is actuality developed by an Australian aggregation which says it has the abeyant to become a applicable another to mammography.

SBC Research is administering an 80-patient balloon to analysis its antecedent that women with breast blight accept college levels of phospholipids in their bloodstream that can be detected in hair.

The aggregation aims to commercialize the analysis and says it could be fabricated accessible to women of all ages as an antecedent screening, clashing mammography which is abundantly belted to women over 50.

hose complex in the bunch began developing a analysis based on their analysis that beard from women with breast blight had a altered corpuscle anatomy to beard from women after the disease.

They used synchrotron X-ray technology to detect 70 per cent of women who had breast cancer in a series of trials, by observing a ring in their hair not present in disease-free hair.

But researchers are now taking a different approach that they believe will deliver a more accurate test.

They made the lipid discovery when a researcher, Dharmica Mistry, who did not have breast cancer, noticed that her hair developed a ring.

”I was looking at X-ray diffraction patterns of hair and I used to use my hair as a regular control,” she said.

”The only thing I did differently was using olive oil in my hair every now and then. I stopped using it and the feature disappeared.

”That led to a series of experiments to assess if what we were seeing was lipid in nature. The hypothesis is that the tumour causes increased lipids in the patient, which is released into the bloodstream and incorporated into the hair fibre.”

The chief scientist at SBC, Peter French, said there was evidence to show increased lipid content in the membranes for cancer cells, compared with normal tissue.

”Cell membranes are comprised of lipids, and what appears to happen in breast cancer is that there is increased fluidity of those lipids. We think that’s why cancer is able to invade,” he said.

Ms Mistry said the test required her to extract internal lipids from hair, rather than any secretions or products on its surface.

”I grind the hair, put it in a vial with an extraction solvent and shake it around to extract the lipids from the fibre,” she said.

The resulting liquid is then analysed to determine its lipid content.

Mr French said a larger second study was needed to confirm the accuracy of the hair test. (SMH)