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Nasal swab may be used to confirm lung cancer after a CT scan, study suggests

By Dr Deepu

“researchers now say it may someday be possible to quickly confirm” lung cancer “after a CT scan, by using a simple nasal swab.” The investigators “identified a pattern of 30 genes that were active in a different way in people confirmed to have lung cancer from those who were not.” The findings were published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
They identified 535 genes that were differentially expressed in the nasal epithelium of AEGIS-1 patients diagnosed with lung cancer vs those with benign disease after one year of follow-up . Using bronchial gene expression data from the AEGIS-1 patients, they found statistically significant concordant cancer-associated gene expression alterations between the two airway sites . Differentially expressed genes in the nose were enriched for genes associated with the regulation of apoptosis and immune system signaling.