A team of US scientists has announced they found a new way to diagnose breast cancer. According to a report from University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, published in the journal Cancer Investigation the scientists claims that the salivary glands of a person with breast cancer secretes a specific mix of proteins, totally different compared to a person without.

They also found unique proteins for a benign type of tumour called fibroadenoma, the most common type of benign breast tumour.

Professor of diagnostic sciences at The University of Texas Health Science Center Dental Branch, Dr Charles Streckfus, the man who led the study, explained the importance of the study.

“This is a unique finding”, said Streckfus, "as it targets both the benign and malignant tumor, which could potentially reduce the number of false positives and false negatives associated with current cancer diagnostics".

According to the university’s website, Streckfus got the inspiration to research breast cancer and saliva from an experiment at the National Cancer Institute in the 1980s. It’s well established “that mice have breast cancer a lot,” he says, which explains why cancer research is often done on mice. The NCI experiment involved removing the salivary glands from the mice, resulting in an 80 percent reduction in breast cancer. “That’s what tipped me off,” says Streckfus.

Now, with the help of the biochemists from the University of Texas at Austin, Streckfuss hopes to develop a diagnostic test that will be used to detect the presence of cancer before a tumor forms.

Streckfus said that though his saliva test for breast cancer has great potential, it wouldn’t replace the dreaded mammogram.

“You still need to find out in which breast it (the malignancy) is located, and that’s where mammography helps,” he explains. The test should prove particularly useful, because the dentists and other healthcare professionals can use it in a simple, non-invasive manner.

"Why not the dentist?", Streckfus said in a statement. "Most folks, especially women and children, visit the dental office way more often than they ever see the physician. Saliva is a non-invasive, quicker way for detection."

But is still a lot of work to be done and Streckfus hopes to seek federal approval for the test within five years. Also, he said that based on his studies, similar test for other types of cancer, such as ovarian, endometrial, cervical and head and neck cancer, could be developed.

According to the American Cancer Society, 180,000 American women are diagnosed with invasive breast cancer and about 40,500 die from this disease each year. About one in eight women are likely to develop breast cancer over their lifetime.