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A new blood test can detect 14 types of cancer before they spread

A new blood test can detect 14 types of cancer before they spread
Cancer is a major killer accounting for nearly one in six deaths worldwide.

The most effective way to treat it is to detect it early, and new, innovative blood tests offer hope in this regard.

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed a simple, non-invasive test that they say can accurately detect 14 different types of stage I cancer.

They tracked the levels of glycosaminoglycans – a type of sugar that is an important part of our metabolism – as a biomarker to detect cancer in the blood and urine samples of 1,260 volunteers.

In their study, published in the scientific journal PNAS, the authors said their method could detect stage I cancer with a sensitivity of up to 62 percent.

The specificity of the test was high, at 95 percent, and it also predicted where tumors were located with 89 percent accuracy.

The authors expect this simple test to cost less than $50.