Can hair be used to screen for breast cancer?

EDITOR—The use of hair as a biopsy tissue has been considered for some time. For instance, in the case of breast cancer, raised zinc levels in head hair have been reported. 1 Besides, x ray diVraction patterns of hair are rich and have attracted much attention for 70 years. 2 However, its potential use as a diagnostic indicator of disease was only suggested a short time ago. 3 Most recently, James et al 4 reported that x ray diVraction of hair taken from women diagnosed with breast cancer (and those at high risk by virtue of a proven BRCA1/BRCA2 mutation) showed a diVuse ring. They claimed a 100% correlation with the disease, advocating the use of pubic hair as a simple non-invasive screening method for breast cancer. The use of pubic hair was suggested in view of possible damage to the head hair from cosmetic treatments. Despite this note of caution, the study of James et al 4 was based on 12 pubic hair samples with only eight from cancer aVected subjects. Here, we report a detailed double blind study from 109 women belonging to five clinically distinct groups as well as a normal population group and show that there is no correlation between the diVuse ring and breast cancer or breast cancer predisposition.. The present work was initiated in November 1998 to provide an independent double blind study on clinically well controlled samples because of our concerns with the study of James et al 4 for which a major proportion of the samples was provided by two of us (AH and DGRE). Both diVraction and x ray fluorescence data have been obtained. DiVraction data were collected on station 2.1 with the multiwire area detector and the fluorescence data on station 7.1 of the UK Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS). The use of a multiwire detector allowed on line alignment of hair within seconds and enabled eYcient diVraction data collection from a large number of samples. Six groups of subjects were selected including a normal population group. For each subject, head and pubic hair were collected and reference numbers assigned in a random manner. The identities of samples were kept blinded until all data were analysed. Each woman was asked to provide information on whether they had had any hair treatment (perm, dye, etc) or were on medication. No hair treatment was reported for pubic hair and thus here only results …