DNA sequencing could help to identify people who are at risk of developing blood cancers months or even years before malignancy appears.

To search for early indicators of cancers such as acute myeloid leukaemia, Steven McCarroll at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and his colleagues sequenced the DNA from stored white blood cells collected from 12,380 people. A team led by Benjamin Ebert at Brigham and Women's Hospital, also in Boston, looked at similar data for another 17,182 people. Both groups then used medical records to find out which people had subsequently been diagnosed with cancer. Older people were more likely to have mutations in genes implicated in blood cancers. People carrying these mutations were up to 32 times more likely than non-carriers to be diagnosed with a blood cancer months or years later.

The authors point out that DNA sequencing cannot yet predict blood cancers accurately enough for use in clinical care.

N. Engl. J. Med. http://doi.org/xdp (2014); http://doi.org/xdq (2014)