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Hair May Show Breast Cancer Researchers say they can detect breast cancer before it develops by examining a single pubic hair. According to the study appearing in the March 4 issue of Nature, scientists found microscopic differences in strands of pubic hair taken from breast cancer patients that were different from the hair taken from healthy women. Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, studied the scalp hair of 23 women diagnosed with breast cancer and compared it with that of 28 women who did not have cancer. Using X-ray equipment, researchers found the hairs of breast cancer patients contained extra rings of the protein keratin. The same pattern was found in an additional 12 women whose pubic hair was analyzed. Pubic hair was easier to test than scalp hair because it was less likely to be damaged from the sun or by hair-coloring dyes or perms. The pubic hair samples even showed that some of the women who did not have breast cancer carried the gene mutation BRCA-1, which has been linked to the disease. Researcher Veronica James says this technique could be useful in detecting breast cancer in women who live in developing countries and who do not have access to mammography, the standard screening for breast cancer. Critics, however, say the Australian study is too small and needs to be replicated in larger groups of women before the test can be considered for conventional clinical use. |
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