Using hair to screen for breast cancer

Veronica James (), John Kearsley, Tom Irving, Yoshiyuki Amemiya and David Cookson
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Veronica James: Rex Vowels Low Angle Diffraction Laboratory, University of New South Wales
John Kearsley: Cancer Care Centre, St George Hospital
Tom Irving: BioCAT, Illinois Institute of Technology
Yoshiyuki Amemiya: Engineering Research Unit, School of Engineering, University of Tokyo
David Cookson: Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation

Nature, 1999, vol. 398, issue 6722, 33-34

Abstract: Abstract We have studied hair using fibre X-ray diffraction studies with synchrotron radiation and find that hair from breast-cancer patients has a different intermolecular structure to hair from healthy subjects. These changes are seen in all samples of scalp and pubic hair taken from women diagnosed with breast cancer. All the hair samples from women who tested positive for a mutation of the BRCA1 gene, which is associated with a higher risk of breast cancer1, also show these changes. Because our results are so consistent, we propose that such hair analyses may be used as a simple, non-invasive screening method for breast cancer.

Date: 1999
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DOI: 10.1038/17949

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