New Ways Of Detecting Ovarian Cancer

By Margarita Nahapetyan

When used in combination, both blood tests and ultrasound may be able to detect ovarian cancer long before the disease starts showing any symptoms, claim British doctors.

For many years scientists have been looking for ways to identify the early stages of a deadly condition, which kills almost 100,000 women all across the world every year. If detected early, more than 90 per cent of women could survive at least five years after being diagnosed. Unfortunately, at the present time, most patients are only diagnosed with the cancer after it starts developing and spreading. In this case, there is only 20 to 30 per cent chance of the five-year survival.

For the new study, doctors, led by Dr. Ursha Menon, head of the Gynecological Cancer Research Unit at the University College in London, involved approximately 200,000 post-menopausal women with the ages between 50 and 74 years all across the UK from 2001 to 2005. About 100,000 of those women have never taken any screening tests. And the rest 100,000 were randomly assigned into 2 groups - half received a transvaginal ultrasound screening only, and another half were screened with a blood test that looks for a marker of ovarian cancer, called CA125. In case of abnormal results of blood testing, the patients then had to undergo transvaginal ultrasound procedure.

The results of the trial revealed 38 cases of ovarian cancer in the participants who had a blood test done first. In women who only had an ultrasound screening, the scientists detected 32 cancer cases. The combination of the blood test method and the ultrasound was able to detect 90 per cent of ovarian cancers, while with the ultrasound alone, the rates were just 75 per cent. The researchers noted that with this method nearly 50 per cent of all the cancers detected were at an early stage I or II, and 48 per cent of more invasive ovarian cancers found, turned out to be stage I tumors. Generally, just 28 per cent cases of the condition are being identified at such an early stage, the experts explained.

In order to finally find out whether these screening strategies have an impact on lethal outcomes, all the women will continue to be screened through 2012 and followed until the end of 2014, the researchers said. Dr. Menon said that it is still too early to make any final conclusions or give firm recommendations based on these results, though they seem very encouraging. She added that both methods that have been used in the study very well and successfully detect ovarian cancers. However, there is more time needed till the end of the trial before any final answers are received on this matter.

Dr. Robert A. Smith, PhD, director of Cancer Screening at the American Cancer Society, said that final results from the British study together with the results of an unpublished yet research from the National Cancer Institute, should be able to find more about whether CA125 and ultrasound in combination will prove successful for routine screening. He said that for more that 20 years the scientists have been exploring the possibility of an effective use of CA125 and transvaginal ultrasound for screening the cancer of the ovaries and "if these studies conclude that these new methods of using these tools have a favorable benefit-to-harm ratio, routine screening for ovarian cancer may become a reality for postmenopausal women."

The report was published in the March 10 online edition of the medical journal The Lancet Oncology.