When a tumour bursts out of the body, doctors have a hard time diagnosing it.
If the cancerous tissue is found in the brain, they are often not able to diagnose it until the cancer is gone.
But this has not been the case for patients with brain tumours.
Now researchers at the University of Queensland are hoping to solve this problem by analysing brain activity from patients before and after they have received a tumours diagnosis.
Dr Simon Lai and colleagues at the university’s School of Health Sciences have been conducting research in this area for the past six years.
They found that brain activity in some patients is higher than in others, and the researchers say this could help them to predict which patients might benefit from a tumorous scan.
The researchers recruited 30 healthy adults aged 18 to 80 and gave them MRI scans.
The scans were taken between 10 and 13 days after the patients were diagnosed with brain cancer.
They were then asked to complete a questionnaire asking about their current mental health, their medical history, symptoms, and symptoms in the past year.
The MRI scans were then analysed to determine if there were any changes to brain activity.
The brain activity data showed that, in the two groups that were not diagnosed with a tumor, brain activity was higher in the patients who had been diagnosed with cancer than the control group.
In contrast, the tumour activity was not altered in the control patients.
“We have shown that the MRI signal changes are different between patients who have a brain tumor and patients who are not,” Dr Lai told ABC Radio Brisbane.
Dr Lae believes this could be because of the different biology of the two types of tumours, which could explain why patients with tumours tend to have more abnormal activity than those who do not.
“Tumours are much more likely to develop in the brains of patients who show higher levels of activity in the prefrontal cortex,” he said.
Dr James Cripps, a senior lecturer in pathology at the School of Medicine, is a co-author of the study.
He says the finding could be a “game changer” for doctors treating brain tumoured patients.
He said a “real game changer”, Dr Cripp’s team could be able to “spot patients with high levels of inflammation in their brain that could be an indication of a brain cancer”.
The researchers hope to use their findings to help guide the development of a test that could identify people with brain cancers that may be resistant to treatment, and potentially identify them on their own.
The study has been published in the Journal of Neuroendocrinology.