Urine Samples Could Reveal Breast Cancer Risk

Oct. 4 -- FRIDAY, Oct. 3 (HealthDay News) -- A simple urine test could one day be an effective way to screen for breast cancer, a new study suggests.

The notion of a so-called "dipstick" test envisions a high-tech sifting through just a few drops of urine in the search for elevated levels of two particular biomarkers, MMP-9 and ADAM-12, which can sometimes indicate the earliest stages of tumor growth, the researchers noted.

"We have had longstanding interest in identifying and validating noninvasive biomarkers of human cancers, including breast cancer," noted study author Marsha A. Moses, of the Vascular Biology Program at Children's Hospital Boston. "Recently, we identified a small panel of proteins in the urine of women who have breast cancer, and these proteins predict both disease status and stage of the cancer."

Moses' team published its findings in a recent issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, & Prevention.

To explore the potential of urine screening for breast cancer, the authors obtained samples from 148 women, 44 of whom had a precancerous condition known as "atypical hyperplasia." Another 24 women had a cancer-risk elevating condition known as lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS), while the rest of the patients were healthy.

The research team concluded that elevated MMP-9 levels were associated with a fivefold increase in the risk for atypical hyperplasia and more than a 13-fold increased risk for LCIS.

Although such screening is not currently an option for patients, Moses has co-founded a company called Predictive Biosciences, which has been given a license for clinical research by Children's Hospital to develop practical screening applications based on her team's ongoing research.

Yet as Moses moves forward with efforts "to move these noninvasive cancer tests into the clinic," others suggest some caution is warranted.

For his part, Dr. Eric P. Winer, director of the Breast Oncology Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, emphasized that the "findings are very preliminary."