You can detect cancer with sugar

Specialists from a British university have told the press about a new safe method of diagnosing cancer. Doctors believe that in the near future this method will become an alternative to the radiological method, which is harmful to the health of a sick person.

Glucose will indicate the activity of a particular zone of a malignant neoplasm. It turns out that the intensity of cancer cell division directly depends on the amount of sugar consumed. And a standard MRI scanner will help detect changes in glucose concentration in cancer cells.

For patients with oncology, it is important to establish a correct diagnosis in a timely manner and prescribe adequate treatment. The therapy process must be monitored continuously to monitor its effectiveness. Achieving full control can be difficult and even dangerous due to the methods used: the location of the tumor is often determined by tests based on the principle of radioactive labels.

The recently developed technology is that regular sugar is used to detect malignant tumor cells. Previously, scientists managed to find out that cancer cells need significantly more sugar than healthy cells. Therefore, products containing large amounts of sugar can be used as a kind of tumor markers. It is a known fact that a malignant tumor, due to intensive growth and increase in size, "consumes" a large amount of glucose. Cancer cells are capable of increasing several times faster in the presence of a large amount of glucose.

At the moment, British scientists have managed to develop a completely new technology aimed at early diagnostics of malignant diseases. The new diagnostic method will allow detecting dangerous cancer cells based on information about how much sugar is "absorbed" by various internal organs. For stable growth and development, malignant cancer cells require much more sugar than healthy cells of the human body.

How to assess the nature of sugar distribution in tissues and organs? For this purpose, the substance is usually labeled, which may not be safe due to radioactivity. In the case of studying glucose, scientists opted for the radio wave method "GlucoCEST". In this case, a magnetic mark is used to study the distribution of sugar, which is recorded by an MRI scanner. The principle of magnetic resonance imaging is based on establishing the deviation of protons as a result of electromagnetic stimulation. As is known, glucose also has protons, so MRI devices make them visible in the sugar molecule when combined with oxygen atoms.

The new method has been successfully tested on small rodents, which has helped specialists to verify the safety and low cost of the diagnostic method. British specialists believe that there is currently no better way to detect cancerous tumors. Moreover, doctors believe that diagnostics will allow determining the presence of cancer cells in the body at the earliest stages. Researchers who took part in the analysis of the new diagnostic method believe that the technology can become common practice in one and a half to two years. It is important that the amount of sugar in the body can be insignificant to pass the "sugar test". Some doctors believe that even a glucose injection is not required; the required amount of sugar is contained in half a bar of dark chocolate.

Another advantage of the new method is that it allows not only to determine the presence of malignant cells in the body, but also to clearly define the boundaries of the tumor. Also, according to experts, any medical institution that has an MRI scanner will be able to afford to diagnose cancer, which, of course, will simplify the work of doctors and will allow saving more people by detecting a cancerous tumor at an early stage.