A biomarker can be any substance in the body that can be measured to indicate or predict the presence of a disease or a condition in the body. It is also used to find out how well the body responds to a specific treatment.
Wait what? You might be thinking “That’s nice and all Mr Writer, but what in blazes does it have to do with me?”
Good question.
Detecting biomarkers early can significantly improve the chances of diagnosing a cancer tumour at its earliest stage. Well consider the fact that for most cancers the chances of a cure are significantly higher if found and treated early. Wouldn’t that be reason enough to find out more about biomarkers?
There are numerous types of biomarkers that have been identified to date. Examples include protein biomarkers, DNA biomarkers, pathological biomarkers and so on. So how do doctors examine you for biomarkers? Well, you walk into the doctor’s office, nurses and doctors will take samples of your blood and usually in a few weeks you will be asked to return to collect the results of your blood tests.
If you learn from your doctor that you have cancer and the only way to make sure was to perform some tests, you probably wouldn’t want to wait for a few weeks to find out what’s going on. You’d want to know right away. So some good people in the US have developed a new micro-device that cuts the waiting time of a few weeks into mere days.
All this good news comes at a price. For all its uses, proper validation for most of the cancer biomarkers has not been achieved. What this means that because it is a relatively new clinical method, not much data can be concluded from the various types of biomarkers that organs, diseases and conditions release.
Ultimately, for all the new ways used to detect cancer early, the best cure for cancer is still prevention.
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