Ovarian cancer test could detect disease earlier than current methods TNA

A new test may be able to detect ovarian cancer earlier than existing diagnostic tools.

Epithelial ovarian cancer, which accounts for 90% of ovarian cancer cases, is one of the deadliest types of cancer, with only 30% of people with the disease living more than five years later. the diagnosis.

One reason for this is that epithelial ovarian cancer is asymptomatic for much of its course, so by the time people see a doctor it has reached advanced stages.

A blood test for a protein called CA125 is used to diagnose ovarian cancer, but it does not always detect the disease reliably. Population screening program tested on over 200,000 women in UK failed to significantly reduce the number of deaths from ovarian cancer.

To develop a better test, Pan Wang of Peking University in China and colleagues collected uterine fluid from 219 women with cancer, including those with early-stage ovarian cancer, advanced ovarian cancer, benign ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer. Uterine fluid contains cells and metabolic products, or metabolites, that come from the ovaries and fallopian tubes.

Using chemical analyzers called mass spectrometers, the researchers examined the fluid of 96 women for metabolites whose levels were markedly distinct for those with early-stage ovarian cancer. They identified a group of seven metabolites, including the amino acids tyrosine and phenylalanine, that could be used for diagnosis.

Then they tested the fluids of the remaining 123 women for these seven metabolites and performed the CA125 test on them. The new test accurately identified most people with early-stage ovarian cancer and did much better than the CA125 test for diagnosing early-stage ovarian cancer.

The results are promising, but the test needs to be validated in a larger group of people, says Eric Eisenhauer at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “Effective nonsurgical tests for early-stage ovarian cancer have been elusive for more than five decades,” he says. “Most of the tests currently available for early detection struggle to identify ovarian cancer while it is still at an early stage. I would like to see this profile validated in a larger prospective data set, but this first report is very promising.

Sujata Rawat at Adesh Hospital in Bathinda, India, points out that the study did not include people without cancer for comparison, and that there may be other conditions that alter the metabolite profile in a similar way .