Diseases such as cancer and diabetes have been found to leave “fingerprints” in the blood plasma and serum of patients—a finding that can be a valuable and non-invasive diagnostic tool in the future, according to a Chinese study.

The latest issue of Cell Research describes how Chinese researchers have altered molecular biomakers, called microRNAs, to be stable in the blood and serum in people who were ill.

Scientists have analyzed the blood of both healthy people and patients with lung cancer, colorectal cancer, and diabetes and have found that the ill patients have drastically different biomarkers than the healthy participants of the study.  The researchers have also found that patients of one disease have markers notably different from another disease — a find that, in theory, could tell doctors what disease is affecting a person just by analyzing their blood.

This means diagnosis of diseases can be made without current invasive methods, such as biopsies, which remove tissue samples for testing.

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