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A Breathalyzer For Cancer
Tiger4 writes "Cancer researchers in the UK have come up with a way to sniff for lung cancer on the breath. 'From the results, the researchers identified 42 "volatile organic compounds" (VOCs) present in the breath of 83% of cancer patients but fewer than 83% of healthy volunteers. Four of the most reliable were used to develop a nine-sensor array made from tiny gold particles coated with reactive chemicals sensitive to the compounds.' Other sources have picked up the story as well. Obviously, this would be a big breakthrough for rapid screening, and early detection significantly improves outcomes."
There should be naturally occurring chemical differences between those with cancer and without its a matter of find them. But my guess is that they may only be detecting those individuals who smoke vs those who dont. They may have scaled according to that, or not. Who knows but I wouldn't bet the farm on this being a break though.I hope I'm wrong and this saves lives.
There's a cat that seems to be able to tell when someone is about to die.
Let me introduce you to my friend Reverend Bayes.
I didn't know that it was illegal to drive while suffering with cancer...
Ken
You can breathalize me for cancer, but you can't brethalize me for cancer causing substances
"present in the breath of 83% of cancer patients but fewer than 83% of healthy volunteers" So, 83% of people with cancer have this chemical, and 82% without cancer can also have it. That test will still leave 17% false negatives and then it would give false positives to nearly everyone else.
So, next time you get pulled over:
"Sir, were you aware of how fast your cancer was progressing?"
Non-oncs generally don't understand that a whole lot of cancer is "clinically irrelevant". That is, it would never go on to kill you. Thus, as early detection gets better in most areas, you detect a greater percentage of cancer that was never going to hurt the patient. However, once you see the cancer, you are duty-bound to slash/burn/poison (Susan Love's famous chapters) to cure it. Statistically speaking, you know you are actually harming some patients, but it is a dilemma -- you hurt all the patients in order to serve a greater good for some percentage of them. A good example is the growing backlash against general PSA screening. Even just a biopsy for prostate cancer can't be 100% risk-free, but the treatment is really risky, assuming you're not enthusiastic about being impotent and/or incontinent for the rest of your life.
So don't get too excited about increased early detection of cancer. Currently, it is usually a double-edged sword that brings suffering to some percentage of patients who would have avoided it before the new test existed. An exciting development would be a detection test for distinguishing cancer that's just sitting there from cancer that's on the move and likely to kill.
Nah, he hasn't been very supportive of unusual means of detecting cancer.
gee .. i wonder which came first the volatile oils or the cancer .. cause or effect ?? ..
It should be obvious now that our bodies have cells that replicate. Sometimes the replicas are perfect but occasionally they are not. After a certain number of replications the errors add up. Most errors are benign but a small fraction are not. With billions of cells replicating there's a statistical certainty that if you don't die of something else then cancer will get you.
The preventative for cancer is to have cells that replicate perfectly, or to not have cells that replicate.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Dogs can do this for $2000 in training, yellow jackets for even less. It is hubris to think techmology is better than a billion years of dice and death.
Nothing is impossible. Continue hoping. Hope keeps us alive. quang ba website
Let me re-phrase that...
"This is a story about a way to patent and monetize something that can be done on the cheap already."
The current hypotheses is that this is most probably observation bias on the personal side, with maybe a combination of people which are dying can#t defend themselves against a cat wanting to sleep on them.
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Lighter company should now manufacture lighter that has a breathalyzer on the otherside(assuming that in future we will have mini-size breathalyzers).
Have a breathalyzer in the pocket along with lighter next to it...so u might want to check how much have u lost after that puff...this might double the sell...can I patent this idea?
to be frank..u have lost it on that first puff!!!
Yeah, if it smells like cigarette smoke, then they probably have lung cancer lol.
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Lets get this developed into a "fartalyzer" next so this can get rid of the very intrusive prostate cancer test.
Any takers?
Eric
Just recentely an article was published about the effects of a "non-perfect" screening test on a large group of people. (They did a case study for a specific test, which gives the same results as the theoretical example below)
If you have a test that is 99% accurate and 1 in 1000 people have the illness, for every million people, you'll find 990 out of a thousand who DO have the disease. And you send home 10 people who do have the disease. Too bad, 990 got the proper treatment. Right? No! Of the 999000 who don't have the disease, you'll find 9990 people with positive results. Are they getting treated? Are there risks to further tests? (for example X-rays create a risk for cancer later on.... )
And finding the 990 people WITH the disease from the 10980 people who tested positive is going to be a hassle. And costly.
Now a test with a 99% accuracy is pretty good compared to this test. As I read the slashdot intro, there is a 17% false negative rate, and up to 82% false positve rate....
Soshulizm.
"Support our Oops."
Oh, okay. Everybody, we can all go home. Apparently there is no use in finding out what compounds are indicative of lung cancer, because dogs can already detect it for us. Also, we should halt research into blindness, because we have guide dogs to help out with that too. While I'm thinking about it, let's scrap all of our research into generating energy, the Sun has been doing it better for billions of years.
What is wrong with these statements? The truth is more useful to us when we know what it is. Way to recognise the value of Science.
Pardon the sarcasm. But I could use exactly the same methodology to try to determine the difference between drunks and non-drunks, and come up with a result of Spearmint.
Very poor reporting here, and not juts from slashdot alone this time.
Two of the links talk about research done in the UK researchers, the third link about that it is done in Israel. One article mentions 62 volunteers, another 94. While it seems they are talking about the same research project - none is referring to the other though.
And of course that 83% number. That means 17% false negatives for cancer patients? How is the false positive rate then for non-patients? In other words: how useful is this test in real life? If healthy people still get a say 70% positive rate it's quite useless I'd say.
Interesting and all that a breath analyses could indicate the presence of cancer but the articles as linked do not make me believe it really exists in a working sense or that it is actually useful at this time. The articles linked at least are too light on detail, and even state facts differently. Unless there are two research groups working on the same thing together (one in UK, the other in Israel), but then why don't the articles refer to this fact?
Hooray, they are only 17% likely to get a false negative on a sick person, and something less than 83% (82%? 50%?) likely to get a false positive on someone healthy.
Combining that with the statistical problem of detecting a rare disease, that's not really useful as the number of true positives vanishes against that of false positives. (Even assuming their results aren't down to a correlation like smoking.)
Wait till your insurance agent carries a C-Breathalyzer. "Please breath, Sir, for a personal cover scheme". There goes Ol' Mutual.
This says that it was researchers in the UK, but, the article says that they were in Isreal. Not that it matters in the end, it's great work by the researchers.
yeah, and horses used to transport people everywhere. If everyone in those olden days thought "lol, a car. they're way to expensive to buy" we wouldnt have decent cars.
Actually, ignoring the Sun as a source of energy really is stupid.
Big oil is laughing all the way to the bank every time we burn gas instead of burn sun.
The other stuff you mentioned, maybe.
But you need to see the light.
P.R. Alert: This Slashdot story is a public relations release. The misleading Slashdot summary says, "Other sources have picked up the story...". In reality, they are inserting press releases everywhere they can, and the kind of work being done is not new.
... believes that the breath test will provide a more convenient and rapid method for diagnosing serious diseases than blood or urine analysis, and will require minimal medical intervention."
It was proven long ago that dogs can smell chemicals associated with cancer. For example, see this 2006 article in National Geographic News, Dogs Smell Cancer in Patients' Breath, Study Shows. That's part of what started the present interest in making a machine to detect cancer.
This February 2007 article is more interesting: Compact lung-cancer breath test may be possible. Quote: "The test uses 36 chemical dots that react to telltale compounds in a person's breath. The dots change colour when exposed to compounds that signify the presence of lung cancer."
This February 2007 article gives more information about how it is done: US Scientists Prototype Breath Test For Lung Cancer
Even Oprah's magazine had article in June 2009 about dogs sniffing cancer and making machines to imitate dogs: Sniffing Out Cancer. Quote: "The researchers are collaborating with scientists at the University of Maine, who are trying to mimic the dogs' cancer-sniffing abilities with laboratory machines." Another quote: "So far, the Pine Street Foundation dogs have done 25,000 scent trials for ovarian cancer."
Slashdot: Not quite as current as Oprah? Old news for nerds who were playing video games and wouldn't know the difference?
Many researchers are doing similar work. For example, see the February 2008 article, The Cancer Breathalyzer. Quote: "Dr Yousef
Other researchers are studying the possibility of using blood tests to detect cancer. See the December 2007 article, Study points to possibility of blood test to detect lung cancer.
Here is a November 2005 research paper that surveys some of the issues of early detection of cancer: The Progress and Promise of Molecular Imaging Probes in Oncologic Drug Development.
Don't you think Cancer sufferers have enough to deal with that they don't need to be stopped at random while driving their cars and subjected to additional tests? They must be allowed to continue to drive or how will they get to their chemotherapy appointments? Is there any evidence that Cancer patients are the cause of accidents? I'm not sure I like this. :-)
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
this is just a easy way for you to have your health care taken away from you also your job as well as your employer does not want to have to cover the costs of cancer. We need a health plan that blocks that crap be for we start useing stuff like this.
Suppose 1 out of 10,000 people in the USA have HIV. Suppose an HIV test has a 99.9% chance of detecting HIV in infected people, and a 99.9% chance of testing negative in people without HIV.
Then, suppose we test 10,000 people.
Among the infected, we will get an average of .999 people who test positive. Among the non-infected, we will get .001 * 9999 = 9.99 people who test positive.
Thus, among people who tested positive, only .999/9.99 = about 10% will actually be infected.
There is an easier way to detect lung cancer via sniffing someone's breath. Ask them how long and how much they smoke, sniff their breath. Cigarette breath? Cancer!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
That would actually be .999/(.999 + 9.99) = 9%.
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If horses were cheaper many people would still use them. Horses are now freakishly expensive.
Back to MY point, this is an incredibly expensive and difficult way to detect cancer compared with training a dog. Why would someone do this? 1. People are dumb. 2. People who are smart try and find ways to take dumb peoples money. 3. People are scared of cancer and think that technology will save them.
REALLY think about what a $2000 dollar cancer detector that loves kids and is powered by dog food and tennis balls could actually do for extending people's live spans. Put on in every mall and I bet you would cut spending on cancer treatment by 90% in 10 years. Early detection for cancer is the cure for cancer. Just ask SciAm.
Sounds like you have the beginnings of a business plan. While you may be a bit too optimistic on cost savings, why not give it a try? Compete with this techno-gadget in the open marketplace and win! If you don't do it you'll be kicking yourself when someone else does and makes a billion.
I'm guessing that dogs are expensive, compared to using machines. Dogs need human handlers, and continuous care.
One of the ideas is to check millions of people routinely. Machines could be available in grocery stores, for example. At present both dogs and machines are too expensive for routine checks, however.
What are all these people claiming "Early detection of cancer will help" basing this statement on?
If everyone who had cancer detected early NEVER DIED, this might make some sort of sense. Since they WILL DIE, we have to change the way to tell if we've helped from "Didn't die" to "Didn't die in the next X years." Of course early detection helps THAT situation.
Let's take the case of someone getting cancer at age 50 and dying of it at age 65. Without detection, they'd wouldn't know til near the end, say age 63. They'd only live 2 more years. If they got early detection at say age 53, they'd live 12 more years, EVEN IF NOTHING WERE DONE! Looking at our "Didn't die in the next X years" definition of 'good' it seems we've helped this person immensely. EVEN THOUGH WE DIDN'T DO A GODDAMNED THING.
C'mon, convince me that early detection helps. And your anecdote ain't gonna cut it.
Dogs are likely to get bored and want to do other stuff after a while. Also the results might not be as consistent from one dog to another.
The device in the article sounds really crap though - consistently crap is not very useful.
I'd be more interested when it is far more accurate. Right now it's not news at all.
Sir you may or may not have cancer; this test was inconclusive, another test is needed. Why go through the trouble, why not straight test for cancer? Come back when results are 100% accurate.
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Just a statistical game.
Why is this even on SlashDot?... Why is this even on Slashdot?...Why is this even on Slashdot?
All three articles credit Israeli researchers for having made the discovery. The only relationship this story has with the UK is that the first link happens to be a UK newspaper.