A new non-invasive test can detect oral cancer in just one hour, a breakthrough that could change how the disease is diagnosed and spare thousands of patients painful surgical biopsies.
The test, which is based on a swab taken with a brush from inside the mouth, has proven highly effective in distinguishing between cancerous conditions and benign lesions, allowing for earlier diagnosis and safer and easier follow-up of patients.
Oral cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide, affecting approximately 650,000 people annually. Major risk factors include smoking and tobacco use, excessive alcohol consumption, infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV), and excessive sun exposure.
The challenge lies in the fact that more than half of oral cancer cases are only discovered at stage four, when the disease has reached an advanced stage, while early diagnosis greatly increases the chances of treatment and survival.
The study, which involved analyzing more than 1,000 samples taken from 545 patients and was conducted by a research team led by researchers from Queen Mary University of London, showed that the new test could reduce by more than 90% the unnecessary surgical biopsies that patients undergo when they are suspected of having oral cancer.
perform in certain areas of the mouth, such as the gums, and can damage the teeth or surrounding bone. The procedure becomes even more challenging when the sample is taken from the tongue, the most common site for oral cancer, making repeated examinations undesirable for both patients and doctors.
The researchers developed the new test, known as qMIDS-V3, based on a previous version that required a very small tissue sample. The new version uses only a surface swab of oral cells with a brush, without removing any tissue, while maintaining similar diagnostic accuracy to the previous test.
Professor Moe Teck Teh, a professor of molecular oral oncology at Queen Mary University, said that oral cancer survival is directly linked to early detection, but the current diagnostic pathway leads most patients to undergo surgical biopsy, even though the likelihood of cancer is low in most cases. He added that the new test offers a rapid, accurate, and non-invasive way to assess patients, and can be repeated regularly to monitor lesions that may become cancerous and detect the disease at an early stage.
The researchers emphasized that what surprised them most was that a simple swab taken with a brush from the surface of the mouth achieved diagnostic accuracy approaching that of a microscopic tissue biopsy, which opens the door to adopting less invasive and more comfortable diagnostic methods for patients in the future.
The study was published in the journal Biomarker Research.
