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Otterfan t1_izbefnf wrote

Science/health journalism always neglects specificity. From the paper's abstract:

> We developed three machine learning models based on urine (Nurine = 220 cancer vs. 360 healthy) and plasma (Nplasma = 517 vs. 425) GAGomes that can detect any cancer with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.83–0.93 with up to 62% sensitivity to stage I disease at 95% specificity. [...] In a validation study on a screening-like population requiring ≥ 99% specificity, combined GAGomes predicted any cancer type with poor prognosis within 18 months with 43% sensitivity (21% in stage I; N = 121 and 49 cases).

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