Ovarian Cancer Symptom Screening And Simple Blood Test Improve Early Detection

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Main Category: Ovarian Cancer
Also Included In: Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 24 Jun 2008 - 9:00 PST

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Researchers in the US have discovered that when used together, a simple blood test and a symptom screening questionnaire can boost early detection rates of both early and late stage ovarian cancer.

The study is the work lead author Dr M Robyn Andersen, an associate member of the Public Health Sciences Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, and is to be published in the 1st August print issue of the journal CANCER due to appear online today.

Symptoms of recent onset ovarian cancer include abdominal or pelvic pain, difficulty eating, and feeling full and bloated soon after starting a meal.

When women answered questions about these symptoms on a a simple four-question questionnaire and had a blood test to look for CA125, a protein marker for ovarian cancer, the detection rates improved by 20 per cent, said the researchers.

When used on its own the questionnaire detects about 60 per cent of early stage ovarian cancer cases, and about 80 per cent of late stage cases. The blood test on its own has about the same detection rate, said Andersen and colleagues.

But when the questionnaire and the blood test were combined into a single screening process, the detection rate went up to more than 80 per cent for early stage detection and 95 per cent for late stage detection.

Andersen said it was the increase in the detection rate of early stage ovarian cancer that most excited them, because the chances of curing the disease are between 70 and 80 per cent when the cancer is still confined to the ovary.

Unfortunately, the survival rate for ovarian cancer is not high because more than 70 per cent of women with the disease aren't diagnosed until it is advanced and has spread, resulting in a survival rate of under 30 per cent for late stage diagnosed cases.

Andersen said their findings suggest that:

"If a woman has one or more symptoms that are new for her, having begun within the past year, and if the symptoms happen nearly daily or at least 12 times a month, that may well be a signal to go in and discuss those symptoms with her doctor."

She said that like breast lumps usually turn out to be benign, a woman who goes to the doctor with these symptoms is more likely to discover she does not have ovarian cancer, but as Andersen explained:

"It's still a sign that it might be worth checking with her doctor to see if a CA125 blood test and transvaginal ultrasound may be appropriate."

For the study, Andersen and colleagues gave the symptom questionnaire to 75 women about to have surgery for pelvic masses who were later diagnosed with ovarian cancer (the case group), and another 254 healthy women who were at high risk of ovarian cancer because of family history (the control group).

Andersen and colleagues are now carrying out a pilot study to find out if the symptom-screening tool, developed in 2006 by co-author Dr Barbara Goff from the University of Washington, would be worth doing as part of routine medical checks on women.

Ovarian cancer used to be known as the "silent killer" because it was believed to have no symptoms in its early stages.

However, Goff and colleagues started listening to what survivors were saying and discovered that the disease was not "silent" after all, and produced the symptom checklist that showed it was possible to find 60 per cent of early stage ovarian cancers (click here for more information on this). And now, in this new study, Andersen and Goff and the rest of the team have boosted that by another 20 per cent by combining the checklist with a blood test.

According to figures from the American Cancer Society (ACS), more than 21,000 women in the US are diagnosed with ovarian cancer every year, and more than 15,000 die from the disease.

Click here for more information on early detection of ovarian cancer (ACS).

Sources: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, ACS.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
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