Too lazy to look for the actual test. how many false positives / false negatives were there? i'm not familiar with the word "sensitivity" in a statistics context.



interesting.

sensitivity refers to the true positive rate, so out of all individuals with a condition (cancer), nearly 96% were correctly identified and 4% were not identified but had the condition.

they go on to say that those 5 patients developed cancer within the next 2 years. the point of this is to highlight the potential for such tests to screen for cancer in VERY EARLY stages when it is easiest to treat, particularly in stages where our current testing methodologies are not sensitive enough to identify patients

Gotcha. Were there any false positives? it wouldnt surprise me if other medical illnesses / circumstances produced a scent that the worms were attracted to as well. but for a simple/cheap test, seems like it has potential as part of an annual exam.

yeah this wouldnt be a substitute for other medical tests but just as a preliminary thing it could direct physicians to look for signs and symptoms or perform more specific tests for people that the worms indicate as being in danger

There are other tumor markers, nn for helminths.

This is non-tumor type specific and has greater sensitivity than most other tests

The results will be probable qualitative then. You won't know for sure. I mean what if they're actually sensing other shit?

i'm no oncologist and scientist like our friend Vivi over here, but i think it's awesome that mankind is making big steps towards understanding cancer better and finding new means of detection, given how common it is worldwide...

OP your link reminded me of something similar i read about a few weeks ago, maybe youll find it interesting: http://www.wired.com/2014/10/miroculus/

i'm sure both of these methods are many years, trials, and approvals away from being put into mainstream healthcare practice, though. that seems to be the way it works.

/e did anybody read about that ultrasound treatment for alzheimer's discovered in Australia? supposedly restored memory fully in 75% of mice and human trials go underway in 2017.

This post was edited by Wretch on Mar 28 2015 01:29pm

Too expensive and nobody's going to use it, as you said, MANY years, maybe even never.
and I'm not an oncologist/scientist, but I can tell you that any experienced clinician can detect cancer easily without the use of a CT/MRI, even from simple blood work one can detect it (anemia of chronic disease for example, decreased Hb% + other indicators).