Research Assessment #4
Date: October 23, 2020
Subject: Cancer prevention and screening: the next step in the era of
precision medicine
Citation: Loomans-Kropp HA, Umar A. Cancer prevention and screening: the next step in the era of precision medicine. NPJ Precis Oncol. 2019 Jan 28;3:3. doi: 10.1038/s41698-018-0075-9. PMID: 30701196; PMCID: PMC6349901.
Assessment:
One of the leading ways of early detection of cancer is preventative screening. Although preventative medicine is beneficial, a few problems arise, with adverse outcomes, including overtreatment, overdiagnosis. Notably, there are several cancers that the action of using preventative cancer treatments does not currently exist. At the same time, preventative cancer treatments rapidly grow exponentially; they integrate molecular knowledge.
Furthermore, as technology advances, the ability to decipher the molecular events that lead to disease progression.
The use of precision cancer prevention and screening strategies will help identify the approaches to under-identified lesions; An unusual area of tissue inside or outside the body that changes the appearance may or may not be cancerous.
By identifying the cause of cancer and evaluating as well as implement cancer prevention interventions. Although cancer risk varies within a population, the population will have different risk factors pertaining to genetics and environmental factors. A high-risk section of the population will pertain and increase over time due to age and exposure. Some of the ways that people can limit their risk of environmental factors are to exhibit behaviors such as smoking, decreasing red meat consumption or limiting fatty foods, and increasing physical activity-these types of prevention are primary preventions.
Secondary prevention helps to reverse carcinogenesis by early detection, which will lead to better treatment outcomes-for example, getting a colonoscopy when one reaches the age of 50. Other methods include NSAIDS; Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, Colonoscopy, Mammography; an x-ray image taken of the breast, and used to check for breast cancer in women with no symptoms.cytology; the diagnosis of a disease by looking at single cells or small clusters of cells or an endoscopy; the insertion of a thin tube, directly into the body in order to observe a tissue or internal organ in detail.
Tertiary prevention methods include preventative therapies or targeted therapies. Also, the somatic mutation theory, a theory that suggests that the stochastic somatic mutations result in the selection of genetic alteration that gives the advantages for the production of tumors or tumors, has several shortcomings due to it not being scientifically tested. In addition to this theory, it mentions no method where DNA alterations without mutations occur.
The informational chart depicts the primary age of prevention strategies, secondary prevention, and precision prevention strategies. As seen for colon cancer, the age one needs to get a colonoscopy is around the age of fifty to fifty-nine; if one's parents were to affect the implementation of this procedure negatively, the age would move about five years earlier. Furthermore, it depicts what type of test and how often it may be needed.
A few cancer screening successes in cervical cancer is that it is minimally invasive and allows for the direct visualization of cellular changes. Although problems arise in identifying high-risk individuals, knowledge of one's family's health history and the genetic test allows us to pinpoint many at-risk individuals more precisely.
The future of cancer prevention and precision medicine is improving as technology and information spread. Although questions still arise: How precise is cancer prevention?
Lastly, the goal of early detection and preventative cancer is to reduce and reverse the effects or risk of someone developing and then dying of cancer. It will require a deeper knowledge of the population, genetic factors, and environmental risks to reach this goal.