A team of scientists through a recently conducted study found that a simple blood test in near future can help save many lives by findings cancers that have again started to show symptoms to relapse even after treatment.

Scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research in London found traces of breast cancer eight months before doctors would normally have noticed in a trail.

Tests found 12 cancers out of 15 women who relapsed. The other three patients with cancers spread to the brain where the protective blood-brain barrier could have stopped the fragments of the cancer entering the bloodstream. The test detected cancerous DNA in one patient who has not relapsed.

Surgery to remove a tumor is one of the core treatments for cancer. A tumor starts from a single cancerous cell, and if a part of the tumor has already spread to another part of the body or the surgeon did not remove it then there are higher chances of the cancer to return.

As per the study researchers, nearly fifty-five patients who were at high risk of relapse because of the size of the tumor were followed in the study published in Science Translational Medicine.

Scientists for the study analyzed the mutated DNA of the tumor and then continued to search the blood for those mutations.

The scientists found that bone of the women in the study were told that cancerous material had been detected as it would have been unethical to base decisions on such an unproven prototype.

Dr Nicholas Turner, one of the researchers, said, "The key question is we identifying that these women are at risk of relapse early enough that we could give treatments that could prevent the relapse?"