Pharmacists should get more involved with researching public health issues, according to a pharmacy chain taking part in a revolutionary pilot to offer breathalyser tests for lung cancer.

The project, being developed by the University of Huddersfield and trialled by pharmacy chain SG Court Group, will be a chance for pharmacists to identify patients before they develop the symptoms of lung cancer, the university said last month (December 13).

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	SG Court Group put forward £105,000 to carry out the initial trials within two years in some of its 20 pharmacies in south-east England and the university matched the funding. Pharmacists could offer the test to patients taking part in stop-smoking services, the university suggested, and it had the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives.

SG Court Group general manager Kevin Cottrell said pharmacists should get more involved with research around public health issues such as lung cancer.

"Pharmacies are the ideal place for it. It's about preventing illness, and that's what we're [already] doing with smoking cessation and weight management," he told C+D.

It was a "big move" for community pharmacy to get involved in primary diagnostics, said pharmacist and University of Huddersfield lecturer Rachel Airley, who developed the project.

"People visit their pharmacies not just when they are ill but when they are well. A pharmacy is a lot less scary than a doctor's surgery," she said. 

Breath-testing devices were already available as research tools for respiratory diseases, Ms Airley explained, but this was the first time they would be used to try to detect chemicals linked to lung cancer.

"We are looking to distinguish between patients with early lung cancer and patients who have bronchitis, emphysema, non-malignant smoking disease or maybe just have a cough," Ms Airley said.

Ms Airley said her team was ready to start collecting breath samples from volunteers to see if they could identify biological genes linked to the disease. Once these were identified, the breathalysers could be adapted to identify other hard-to-detect cancers, she added.

Lung cancer accounts for 6 per cent of all deaths in the UK, largely because the symptoms are diagnosed too late, the University of Huddersfield said.

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