London - A breakthrough screening method for ovarian cancer can detect twice as many women with the disease, a study has found.
The technique – which monitors changing levels of a protein in the blood – diagnosed almost 90 percent of women who had ovarian cancer in a 14-year trial.
The conventional blood test would have identified less than half of these women.
More than 200 000 patients took part in the trial – the world’s largest for ovarian cancer. The results, hailed as a “significant achievement”, could herald the first national screening programme for the disease. Ovarian cancer affects almost 7 000 women a year and kills more than 4 000 – often because they were diagnosed too late.
Women are currently checked for high levels of the protein CA125 in their blood, which is a marker for ovarian cancer. The new approach looks for the same protein, but instead of using a fixed cut-off point to determine the risk of cancer it monitors the change in levels.
This method detected cancer in 86 percent of women with ovarian cancer, whereas the conventional test would have identified less than half of these. The results come from the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening led by University College London. The trial involved 202 638 post-menopausal women aged 50 or over, assigned to two different types of screening or no test at all.
The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, looked at the 46 237 women who had annual tests for CA125 levels before a computer worked out their risk of ovarian cancer based on factors including age, the original levels of CA125 and how that level had changed over time.
Trial leader Professor Usha Menon said: “There is currently no national screening programme for ovarian cancer, as research to date has been unable to provide enough evidence that any one method would improve early detection of tumours.
“These results are therefore very encouraging. They show that use of an early detection strategy based on an individual’s CA125 profile significantly improved cancer detection compared to what we’ve seen in previous screening trials.
“While this is a significant achievement, we need to wait until later this year when the final analysis of the trial is completed to know whether the cancers detected through screening were caught early enough to save lives.”
Previous large screening trials for ovarian cancer have used a fixed cut-off level for CA125. However, some women can have much higher levels and be cancer-free, while those who were below the threshold could still be harbouring the disease.
In this trial, 640 women had surgery for suspected cancer, of whom 133 had invasive ovarian cancers. A further 22 women were diagnosed within a year of the last annual screening.
Athena Lamnisos, chief executive of the Eve Appeal, which part-funded the trial, said: “The statistics around ovarian cancer are brutal and diagnosis often comes too late.
“These latest results are exciting and point towards the strides that we’re making.”
Dr Simon Newman, head of research for Target Ovarian Cancer, said: “These are highly encouraging results, and we are pleased that the UK is leading the way in research to develop screening methods for ovarian cancer.”
Daily Mail