A NONINVASIVE TEST FOR THE PRECANCEROUS BREAST

This paper describes a non-invasive, self-measured procedure by which the precancerous breast can be distinguished from the normal breast. T he method involves wearing a specially designed thermometric brassiere for 90 min each evening at home through one menstrual cycle. Profiles of progesterone through the cycle, obtained from daily saliva samplin g, and determination of the steroid content by radiommunoassay, are ma de to allow the status and calendar date timing of the luteal phase to be established. Thus, cycles can be synchronised across subjects. In this study, two types of breast were compared: 50 normal breasts and 4 1 age-matched precancerous breasts. Differences between the groups wer e striking in terms of amplitude, phasing and average temperature duri ng the luteal heat cycle. When these parameters and others were used a s predictors in a linear discrimination and/or neural net analysis, a sensitivity and specificity of >90% was achieved.