Breath test may be key to early diagnosis of stomach and oesophageal cancers

A SIMPLE breath test could soon be used to diagnose early cases of two deadly cancers.

Findings from a large trial involving more than 300 patients have shown that the test can identify stomach and oesophageal cancers with 85% accuracy.

Both types of cancer are often diagnosed late, leading to poor survival rates. Scientists hope the new breath test will ultimately lead to cancers being spotted earlier, resulting in more effective treatment and saved lives.

It is also expected to help doctors avoid unnecessary endoscopy examinations – unpleasant diagnostic procedures that require a flexible telescope to be inserted down the throat and into the stomach.

Each year in the UK around 6,682 people are diagnosed with stomach cancer and 4,576 die from the disease.

Similar figures for oesophageal cancer, affecting the food pipe or gullet, show 8,919 new cases per year and 7,790 deaths.

For the new study breath samples were collected from 335 patients at three London hospitals. Of these, 163 had been diagnosed with oesophageal or stomach cancer while 172 were shown to be cancerfree after undergoing endoscopy tests.

In each breath sample, levels of butyric, pentanoic and hexanoic acids, and the chemi- cals butanal, and decanal were measured.

The results, presented at the European Cancer Congress meeting in Amsterdam, showed that the test was both good at identifying those patients who had cancer, and unlikely to produce a false diagnosis. A larger trial is planned over the next three years.