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A Noninvasive Breakthrough in Diagnosing Mesothelioma

ByHolly Zink
A Noninvasive Breakthrough in Diagnosing Mesothelioma

Researchers from Sweden think that noninvasive immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis can correctly diagnose mesothelioma.

This could be helpful to doctors who want to look for mesothelioma in their patients. It can be hard to diagnose mesothelioma and doctors often need to use invasive methods to reach a diagnosis.

An Accurate Mesothelioma Diagnosis

Mesothelioma is a rare cancer, and the symptoms usually look like other, more common, diseases. Because of this, doctors struggle to identify mesothelioma in their patients.

Symptoms typically include fatigue, shortness of breath, abdominal pain, and coughing. The symptoms are caused by cancerous cells that develop due to a person’s exposure to asbestos.

To diagnose mesothelioma, a doctor will first perform a history and physical. The history involves learning about when the symptoms started. It also includes any mesothelioma risk factors you might have, such as exposure to asbestos. For the physical, the doctor will look at your body for signs of illness.

If the doctor thinks that mesothelioma might be a possible diagnosis, they will need to run more tests. These may include imaging tests, removing fluid for testing, a biopsy, and other procedures. Some of these tests, like a biopsy, can be invasive and painful.

The Potential of Immunohistochemical Analysis for Mesothelioma

IHC analysis is a way to test the fluid around the possible cancer site for mesothelioma biomarkers. The procedure to collect the fluid is simple and noninvasive. IHC analysis can give the doctor important information. This is especially important when looking at tissue samples is not possible.

For this study, the researchers compared 59 pairs of tissue samples and fluid samples from patients with mesothelioma. The researchers ran the IHC analysis on the fluid samples. They found that it was accurate at diagnosing mesothelioma over 90% of the time.

The researchers recommend more studies to look at this method for diagnosing mesothelioma. Further research can help to improve the accuracy of IHC analysis at diagnosing this disease.

Source

Mansour MSI, Huseinzade A, Seidal T, et al. Comparison of immunohistochemical mesothelial biomarkers in paired biopsies and effusion cytology cell blocks from pleural mesothelioma [published online ahead of print, 2023 Jun 19]. Cytopathology. 2023;10.1111/cyt.13265. doi:10.1111/cyt.13265. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37337638/

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