Blood Test and Cancer

AMAS or AMA (Anti-Malignan Antibody) blood test for cancer

What is the AMAS blood test?

This blood test measures an antibody in the blood called anti malignin. Antibodies are proteins made by the immune system that help the body to fight disease.

Two American doctors discovered anti malignin in 1992. They found that anti-malignin antibody levels were higher in people with early stage cancer. They developed a blood test and named it the ‘AMAS test for Anti-Malignan Antibody in Serum’. They thought that the AMAS blood test would be an effective way to find cancer cells in the early stage of the disease.

An American company called Oncolab Inc now promote the AMAS test. On their website, this company suggest that the test may help doctors learn more about the stage of their patients cancer and their outcome (prognosis). But they don’t think it safe for doctors to use the AMAS test alone to diagnose cancer. And they say it hasn’t been tested as a screening tool for the population in general and so it wouldn’t be safe to use it to screen people with no symptoms for cancer.

What research has been done into the AMAS blood test?

There have been several studies looking at how useful the AMAS blood test is for people with cancer. One 1993 study involved 350 people - half had breast disease (some cancerous and some not) and half were healthy and had no breast disease. It was only people with breast cancer who had raised anti malignin antibodies. And the antibody level returned to normal once breast cancer treatment was over and there was no evidence of any remaining cancer.

More recently in 2000, an American study tested 154 healthy volunteers and 76 patients with the AMAS test. The researchers compared the reliability of the AMAS test to other blood tests for ‘tumour markers’. Tumour markers are chemicals made by some cancers and measurable in the blood, for example CA125 in ovarian cancer and PSA in prostate cancer. These 'markers' have also been investigated as possible tests for cancer. This study found that the AMAS test, although not completely reliable, was more sensitive than the tumour markers tested.

These are small studies suggesting that this is still early research. We don’t know of any larger clinical trials using the AMAS test as a way of helping to diagnose cancer. We were also unable to find any evidence that the Food and Drug Administration of America (FDA) have approved the AMAS test. Yet, brochures and articles promoting the test often claim that it is ‘FDA approved’.

Is the AMAS blood test available in the UK?
This is not a standard test to help diagnose people with cancer. We need a lot more research before we will know just how useful the AMAS test is for helping to diagnose cancer.

As far as we are aware the AMAS test is only available via commercial websites as it remains unproven. For the UK, a company called Quest Diagnostics forward samples to Oncolab in the USA for testing. If you are thinking of contacting either Quest or Oncolab about having this test, we strongly advise you to discuss this with your cancer specialist or GP beforehand.

Angstrom Minerals Product And Price List

The information on this page has been extracted from http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/help/
default.asp?page=10717.

Exactly what is a biopsy and how does it work?

A biopsy means taking a small body tissue sample from somewhere in the body and examining it very closely under the microscope. Biopsies are usually taken during medical tests or operations. For example, you may be having an endoscopy - an examination that looks at the inside of your oesophagus (gullet) and stomach.

If your doctor sees signs of stomach ulceration, small tissue samples will be cut out and sent to the laboratory. The cells in these samples of tissue will be looked at very closely under the microscope to see if they are normal or cancer cells. If they were normal, then you would be diagnosed with a stomach ulcer. If they looked cancerous, then you would be diagnosed with stomach cancer.

Cancer cells look quite different to normal cells. They are often more primitive looking and have oddly shaped nuclei compared to a normal cell. Even so, you can usually tell what type of body cell it was originally. Doctors can sometimes tell from biopsies where in the body a cancer has started.

As you can see, biopsies are vitally important in medicine. It is virtually impossible to diagnose some types of cancer any other way. Doctors can see signs on CT scans, and when they examine you, that indicate cancer. But often, the only way to be sure is to actually look for cancer cells under the microscope.

http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/help/default.asp?page=2599&order=3137