Hair Tests and Cancer

Hair analysis can reveal the truth about other things in addition to diet. X-ray analysis of a single hair might reveal whether a woman has breast cancer. This finding could help doctors diagnose other types of cancer, and may provide clues about how the disease progresses and how best to treat it.

All this came about through a happy accident. Australian researcher Veronica James was on her way to Japan to expose some skin samples to radiation from a synchrotron X-ray scattering machine. She and her colleagues had long investigated how skin changes in women with breast cancer. However, a janitor mistakenly threw out her skin samples. So instead, she tried hair.

They found that hair from women with breast cancer, and women at high risk of breast cancer, had a different molecular structure than hair from healthy patients. The cancer and high-risk patients' hairs produced a ring-shaped shadow in the synchrotron that other hair did not. James and her colleagues believe that the pattern arises from a particular kind of breakdown in the cell membrane as the hair is formed in the follicle.

All 23 of the hair samples from breast-cancer patients showed the ring pattern. Of five women who were considered at high risk of developing breast cancer (they had a strong family history of it, and their cells showed a mutation that tends to lead to the disease), three of them showed the same change in X-ray pattern. The other two showed a partial change. Finally, only 14% of healthy patients (4 out of 28) showed any change in X-ray pattern. This percentage corresponds roughly to the average rate of women who, though healthy and at low risk for breast cancer, may one day still develop the disease.

These promising results came about after several stages of examination. Initially, the X-ray technique showed some variability in women who had colored or permed their hair within three months. The chemicals involved in hair treatments can damage cell structure. Thus the results were not quite right. In order to avoid such contamination of the samples, James decided to use pubic hair in addition to scalp hair. When the researchers repeated the procedure with pubic hair, the variability disappeared, and the results became exactly accurate for the known cancer patients. James and her colleagues reported their findings in the March 4, 1999 edition of Nature.

According to James, cancer patients often have high levels of cell-growth factors in their blood, which may alter hair structure. The chief of solid tumor oncology at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Larry Norton, told the New York Times "the association between hair and cancer is not too farfetched. Why should a drug that kills cancer also make hair fall out? Maybe there is a biochemical similarity."

James and her research team are conducting preliminary tests on hair from people with different kinds of cancer. Early results indicate that these too produce unique changes in hair structure. With more study and experimentation, the technique could lead to an accurate, affordable cancer test. Such an easy test might attract patients who are reluctant to subject themselves to the pain and inconvenience, as well as the expense, of mammograms or lumpectomies.

Sources

"Using Hair to Screen for Breast Cancer." Veronica James, and colleagues. Nature, March 4, 1999, page 33.

"Hair Testing by Schools Intensifies Drug Debate." Christopher Wren. New York Times, June 14, 1999, page A16.