Simple nose swab could be used to detect lung cancer in smokers, study reveals
A simple and cheap nose swab could soon detect lung cancer in smokers, scientists revealed today.
Smoking damages the cells in the lining of the nostrils involved in smell, a study by Boston University School of Medicine found.
Detecting these changes can accurately predict whether the patients have malignant and possibly deadly cancer without having to do biopsies.
There are usually no signs or symptoms in the early stages of lung cancer.
But many people with the condition eventually develop symptoms including a persistent cough, coughing up blood, persistent breathlessness, unexplained tiredness and weight loss and an ache or pain when breathing or coughing.
Those suspected of having it are given a chest x-ray and then scans but these cannot differentiate between benign and malignant lesions.
Those thought at risk then have to undergo an invasive bronchoscopy where it is inserted through the mouth or nose, down the throat and into the airways of the lungs to take a tissue sample.
Or they may have other types of biopsy.
The new study found genomic biomarker in the nasal passages can accurately determine the likelihood of a lung lesion being malignant.
The simple swab of their nose can determine if they have the disease sparing them from costly and risky procedures.
Co-senior author Professor Dr Marc Lenburg said: "Our findings clearly demonstrate the existence of a cancer-associated airway field of injury that also can be measured in nasal epithelium.
"We find that nasal gene expression contains information about the presence of cancer that is independent of standard clinical risk factors, suggesting that nasal epithelial gene expression might aid in lung cancer detection.
"Moreover, the nasal samples can be collected non-invasively with little instrumentation or advanced training."
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Professor Dr Avrum Spira added: "Our group previously derived and validated a bronchial epithelial gene-expression biomarker to detect lung cancer in current and former smokers.
"This innovation, available since 2015 as the Percepta Bronchial Genomic Classifier, is measurably improving lung cancer diagnosis.
"Given that bronchial and nasal epithelial gene expressions are similarly altered by cigarette smoke exposure, we sought to determine in this study if cancer-associated gene expression might also be detectable in the more readily accessible nasal epithelium."
The study analysed nasal epithelial brushings from current and former smokers undergoing diagnostic evaluation for pulmonary lesions suspicious for lung cancer.
The epithelial tissue inside the nasal cavity is involved in smell.
It then determined that the nasal airway epithelial field of lung cancer-associated injury in smokers extends to the nose and has the potential of being a non-invasive biomarker for lung cancer detection.
Prod Spira said: "There is a clear and growing need to develop additional diagnostic approaches for evaluating pulmonary lesions to determine which patients should undergo CT surveillance or invasive biopsy.
"The ability to test for molecular changes in this 'field of injury' allows us to rule out the disease earlier without invasive procedures."
The findings, which appear online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.