A new study of 4,000 women is giving the medical community hope that it may soon be possible to screen for ovarian cancer at an early stage, increasing the potential of saving those at risk from the hard-to-detect disease.
The study done by the University of Texas study was small, with only 4,051 women involved over 11 years. However the technique used to carry out early-stage screening is similar to that being tested in a large-scale UK study involving 300,000 women, which will be complete in 2015.
Patients with ovarian cancer have few if any symptoms and by the time they are diagnosed with it, the cancer is often at an advanced stage. The survival rate of ovarian cancer is 90 per cent if it is caught early. This drops to 30 per cent if it is discovered in its later stage.
In the study, the women underwent yearly blood tests, and the researchers recorded the levels of a protein called CA-125, which is higher when an ovarian tumor is present. Women who had sudden increases in CA-125 levels were referred to a gynecologist and were given an ultrasound.
However, it is too unreliable on its own. It misses some patients and tells others they have the cancer when they are actually healthy.
Researchers are now testing the idea of using the blood test to sort patients in risk groups based on levels of CA125. Instead of going straight for surgery, low-risk patients are tested again in a year, medium-risk ones after three months and high-risk patients have an ultrasound scan to hunt for tumors.
This trial was found to demonstrate "excellent specificity and positive predictive value" and the results were published in Cancer, the American Cancer Society journal.
"I've become an admitted skeptic of ovarian cancer screening," said Professor Karen Lu, M.D. one of the study's authors.
"Now, with these findings, I'm cautiously optimistic that in the not too distant future, we may be able to offer a screening method that can detect the disease in its earliest, curable stages and make a difference in the lives of women with this now-devastating disease."
