An Experimental Saliva Test for Breast Cancer

Last week I was wowed by a TV news report of an experimental saliva test for breast cancer that could be administered by—of all unexpected members of my medical support team— my dentist. As a breast cancer survivor, I’m as jumpy as a cat in a car about a recurrence (my scars always feel scarily lumpy to me), so I’m especially alert to reports of new ways to detect it.

According to the Houston ABC Eyewitness News, a professor at the University of Texas dental school has apparently found a protein in saliva that can detect breast cancer at a very early stage, and possibly other cancers as well: prostate, head and neck, ovarian, cervical, colon, and pancreatic. The breast cancer test appears to be the closest experimental saliva cancer test to an FDA trial, and the professor's hope is that it will be in dentists' offices within a decade.

It’s the best idea I’ve heard yet: A spit test—so simple it almost sounds silly.

This isn’t the first time I’ve read about saliva testing. Last March (2006) I read a Forbes story about promising saliva testing for oral cancer at the Dental Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles.

And last August (2006) London's Daily Telegraph reported some promising early results in a British pilot study that tests blood for breast cancer.

I’m betting I’m not the only one who’d be more likely to take a blood test (which I do every year routinely anyway to check on other things) or spit in a cup than change into a droopy gown and watch my breasts get painfully flattened.

These new noninvasive, non-breast-exposing cancer spy-craft possibilities sound so exciting to me that their absence from headlines around the world has me mystified. Aside from a cure, isn’t this just what we’ve been looking for?

So where’s the hoopla? Are these tests not as promising as they sound? What’s holding things up here?

I sigh and rejoin the waiting game.

Find out more about Mary Blocksma on her Web site. Read her full breast cancer story, from diagnosis through radiation, on her breast cancer page.