In the past, when biopsies were taken of tumors doctors only looked for a few genetic markers needed for growth. If these markers were found in the tumor, they know the tumor was malignant and needed to be removed. Now, however, it is knows that this leads to a lot of false positives. Scientists discovered that there are an additional set of changes in the patients normal tissue that occur when tumors are going to have rapid growth. If patients DNA can be tested in normal tissues before the tumor formation occurs, tests can be done on them again when testing a suspicious growth. if there are changes from the first test to the second test, it is a good indicator that the tumor is dangerous and needs to be removed. the only problem with this is that, unless it becomes a new standard in medicine for every patient to have their normal tissue DNA tested, it is unlikely that this will be of much use.
It is interesting that they offer this kind of test, but it is unlikely that people will sign up to have their DNA tested first.
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