Get Healthy!

• Posted November 14, 2025

Early Warning Sign Revealed For A 'Silent Killer' Cancer

Pancreatic cancer is known as a silent killer, showing few symptoms until it reaches its deadly final stages.

But researchers think they’ve found a warning sign that could help detect pancreatic cancers at an earlier, more treatable stage.

Enlargement of the pancreatic duct — which connects the organ to the bile duct — is linked to higher odds of pancreatic cancer among people at high risk for the illness, researchers reported in the journal Gastro Hep Advances.

“This finding may lead to better survival if cancers are detected early,” senior researcher Dr. Marcia Irene Canto said in a news release. She’s a professor of medicine and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

The pancreas is an organ that sits behind the stomach, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS). It plays a crucial role in digestion and blood sugar regulation, by producing digestive enzymes and hormones like insulin.

Pancreatic cancer accounts for about 3% of all cancers in the U.S. but 8% of all cancer deaths, according to the ACS.

That’s because it’s often diagnosed at a late stage, after it’s started to spread to other organs, with five-year survival rates ranging from 3% to 16%, the ACS says. The pancreas is deep inside the body, so doctors can’t detect early tumors during routine physical exams.

For the new study, researchers performed MRI and ultrasound scans on 641 people at high risk of pancreatic cancer, either because multiple immediate blood relatives have had it or because their genetics increase their risk.

The team found pancreatic duct enlargement in 97 of the patients.

People with this enlargement were 16% more likely to develop pancreatic cancer after five years and 26% more likely after 10 years, the study said.

Overall, participants were 2.6 times more likely to wind up with pancreatic cancer if they had duct enlargement, particularly if they also had three or more pancreatic cysts, researchers found.

“By identifying this risk factor early, we were able to intervene more quickly,” Canto said.

“The intervention would be to either operate or do much more frequent imaging,” she continued. “It was remarkable how even with the best imaging technology, a pancreatic cancer mass may not be visible even when it is causing structural changes in the gland. We have an opportunity to do better.”

This warning sign could be found as doctors perform scans for other health problems like kidney stones or abdominal pain, Canto noted.

“Providers should be aware that it is something that needs to be addressed right away,” she said.

The next step in research is to train AI to analyze pancreas scans to make a more specific and accurate prediction of cancer risk, Canto said.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more on pancreatic cancer.

SOURCES: Gastro Hep Advances, Sept. 12, 2025; Johns Hopkins Medicine, news release, Nov. 11, 2025