Two groups of American researchers have unwittingly reached the same discovery: some people have a marker in their blood that signals a risk of developing blood cancer such as leukemia Where lymphoma.
Two studies carried out in parallel but not jointly and published in the New England Journal of Medicine reveal that these markers, which are not present at birth but develop when the person ages, would be indicators of future blood cancers. Specifically, people who are carriers of these “somatic markers” are 10 times more likely to get cancer than others.
For the first study, researchers at the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston were looking for a mutation in the blood, since the likelihood of having leukemia or lymphoma increases with age. They discovered that this mutation also increased the risk of type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and ischemic stroke.
For the second study, researchers at Harvard Medical School were working on something quite different. They were looking to find out if somatic markers had anything to do with the risk of schizophrenia. But during their research they noticed that these markers were concentrated in specific genes, which are those of cancer. By following the patients in their study, they then realized that carriers of this marker had a higher risk of blood cancer.
The researchers know that their discovery will open the debate on the early detection of this marker. But, for now, they do not see the need for it because there is neither surgery nor preventive drug treatment for leukemia or lymphoma.
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