“This is an excellent study that demonstrates the potential for a commonly used blood test to identify some patients with cancer earlier,” he said. Richard Neal, professor of primary care oncology at the University of Leeds who was not involved in the research, welcomed the study.

That, say the researchers, makes testing for raised platelet count a valuable tool, and could speed up cancer diagnosis by at least three months for thousands of patients a year. While many different types of cancer were present in both groups, the team found that breast and prostate cancers were less common among those with thrombocytosis than in the general population, while lung and colorectal cancers were more common.įor about a third of cases of lung and colorectal cancer in patients with thrombocytosis, there had been no other symptoms that raised the suggestion of cancer. Of the men who had a raised platelet count of the same value or higher six months after being diagnosed with thrombocytosis, 18.1% developed cancer, while for women the figure was 10.1%. The team add that cancer was more common among for those who had thrombocytosis for longer. “We found cancer was more commonly diagnosed in men with raised platelet counts than it was in women with raised platelet counts and we believe that is because there are more causes of raised platelet counts in women that are not cancer,” said Bailey. In the general population about 1% of individuals over the age of 40 develop cancer each year.įor comparison, among women aged between 50 and 59 who have discovered a breast lump, the proportion who are found to have breast cancer is 8.5%.

Within a year of the blood test, the team found that cancer was more common among those who had thrombocytosis: 11.6% of men and 6.2% of women were found to have cancer compared to 4.1% of men and 2.2% of women without a raised platelet count. In total, over 31,000 patients found to have a raised platelet count, and nearly 8,000 without, were included in the analysis.

The patients were selected at random from a national database. Writing in the British Journal of General Practice, Bailey and colleagues report how they examined data from almost 50,000 individuals aged 40 or over who had been given a blood test by their GP.

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