Breast cancer spreads before it is detected

BREAST cancer cells start spreading to other parts of the body long before a tumour is detected, research has found.

The finding radically alters the previous view that cancer cells spread only at the most advanced stage of the disease.

Scientists discovered that breast cancer cells can infiltrate other organs before the disease is diagnosed but may lie dormant there for years before growing.

Because these breakaway cells split from the original cancer very early on, they may not respond to the same treatment as the tumour – as they may have mutated so much in the intervening time that they are effectively a different form of the disease.

The study, in the journal Nature, highlights the seriousness of early stages of cancer and explain how secondary cancers can develop before a primary tumour is found. The spread of cancer is the cause of death in the majority of breast cancer cases.

Professor Julio Aguirre- Ghiso of the Icahn School of Medicine in New York said the research may shed light on why it is so difficult to treat cancer that has spread. ÷THE number of women being tested for a cancer gene rose by almost two thirds after Angelina Jolie, 41, revealed she was a carrier and had had a double mastectomy.

The actress lost her mother, aunt and grandmother to breast cancer before learning she had the BRCA1 mutation. A Harvard Medical School study, in the BMJ, found the testing rate was up 64 per cent in the three weeks after her revelation in 2013 compared with the previous three weeks.