[NMR research on blood plasma for tumor detection--a method for mass screening?]

Abstract

Recently, a simple NMR test was proposed to distinguish patients with and without malignant diseases by line-width analysis of methyl and methylene lipoprotein resonances in human plasma (4). We have reevaluated this proposed cancer detection technique at 250 MHz (magnet field strength 5.9T). The mean line width for 11 controls was 31.2 Hz (SD 4.1 Hz). For 8 patients with untreated malignant tumors, the line width was 27.5 Hz (SD 3.9 Hz). The data confirm the reported lower line widths of human plasma NMR resonances for patients with malignant tumors compared with controls (4). However, the statistical significance (P greater than 0.07) does not justify to use this technique for individual differential diagnostic purposes without further improvements of the method.