• Question: In how much time of anticipation should strong diseases such as cancer be detected to cure it?

    Asked by Noraa to Ben, Lizzie, Francis, Max, Sian on 9 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Francis Man

      Francis Man answered on 9 Mar 2018:

      Ideally, as soon as it appears.
      Some cancers develop very quickly, so you need to act fast. Others are much slower and don’t require urgent action.

    • Photo: Lizzie Wright

      Lizzie Wright answered on 10 Mar 2018:

      Hi Nora, the sooner the better really. Catching it early means that we can treat it before it grows too big and spreads to other parts of the body; however it can be difficult to detect very small tumours of cancers and we might not notice them until they are big enough to impact us.

      A lot of diagnostic tests called “liquid biopsies” are currently in development, which aim to detect tiny fragments of cancer DNA in the blood. The hope is that one day, we could all have a blood test done every year and we would be able to detect cancerous cells very early on.

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