Researchers hope the simple test could identify up to 20% of young neuroblastoma sufferers with this ultra high-risk form of the disease.Researchers hope the simple test could identify up to 20% of young neuroblastoma sufferers with this ultra high-risk form of the disease.

A simple blood test could help more young children survive an aggressive and often deadly form of cancer, a new study suggests.

An international team of scientists has found that “biomarkers” in the blood identify a hard-to-treat form of neuroblastoma, the most common cancer in children aged five or under, accounting for 15 per cent of deaths from the disease.

They believe a test can be created which would allow doctors to identify children with the high-risk form of the disease earlier, allowing them to be offered experimental treatments that may have a higher chance of success than chemotherapy.

Study leader Sue Burchill, of the School of Medicine at the University of Leeds, said: “This not only gives them the best chance of living longer, but will help speed up the development of much needed new treatments for this group of children.”

Neuroblastoma affects 100 children every year in the UK. The survival rate has risen from around 40 per cent in the 1980s to 60 per cent but it remains hard to treat and early identification is vital.

The researchers found a substance in the blood that can help identify what is known as a “stage four” neuroblastoma, which does not respond well to chemotherapy and has very low survival rates.

They hope the simple test could identify up to 20 per cent of young neuroblastoma sufferers with this ultra high-risk form of the disease, who rarely survive for more than two years following diagnosis.

The team came from the UK, Italy, France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Greece and Austria, and were funded by Cancer Research UK and the Neuroblastoma Society.

Guy Blanchard, a research trustee at The Neuroblastoma Society, said: “This new research shows that simple blood biomarkers can help identify at diagnosis a group of children with stage four neuroblastoma for whom new kinds of treatment are urgently needed.

“Because this study is a collaboration in several European countries the test has a better chance of being adopted more quickly and more widely.”

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.