Hair Test to Detect Breast Cancer

A REVOLUTIONARY test that detects the first signs of breast cancer from a few strands of a woman’s hair could be on sale within months.

Capable of picking up the disease in the early stages when it is easiest to treat – Fermiscan could help save thousands of lives.

The Pounds 100 test homes in on changes in the structure of cancer sufferers’ hair.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in Britain.

It affects more than 44,000 women a year and kills more than 1,000 a month.

Survival rates here are lower than many other parts of the developed world. The risk of death in six months after diagnosis is higher than anywhere else in Europe.

The test, which can detect cancer from 20 strands of hair just an inch long, could be valuable in diagnosing it in younger women.

The under-50s account for one in five cases of breast cancer but have denser breasts that are harder to screen with mammography.

The Fermiscan could also help to detect tumours that emerge in the three-year gap between the breast Xrays or mammograms routinely given to the over-50s.

When normal hair is put under a microscope, it appears as series of arcs. In people with breast cancer, a distinctive ring is superimposed on to these arcs, New Scientist magazine reports.

Trails on 800 women have shown it is about 80 per cent accurate. But British experts questioned the accuracy of the test which shows a high number of false positive results.

Dr Alison Ross, of Cancer Research UK, said it could miss cancer in people with the disease but give a false positive in healthy women.

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