Scientists have identified a chemical in the blood that can indicate ovarian cancer at an early stage. If confirmed by larger studies, the finding may provide a way to detect ovarian cancer when the disease is most treatable.
Because ovarian cancer usually escapes detection until it has spread beyond the ovaries, it is the deadliest of all gynecological cancers. The survival rate at 5 years with advanced disease is not more than 15%. But if so the cancer can be detected it is still localized, almost 0% of patients live longer than 5 years. A possible early warning sign was on Yan Xu cancer biologist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation while studying lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), a chemical blood which stimulates the growth of cancer cells of ovary in the laboratory. Because some patients with advanced ovarian cancer have elevated levels of the APL, Xu asked whether women in the early stage of the disease may also have elevated LPA levels.
Xu and colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation has recruited 84 women with various gynecological cancers and tested their LPA levels. They report in tomorrow's issue of Journal of the American Medical Association that all women with advanced ovarian cancer and 95% of women with other gynecological cancers had blood levels LPA higher than their healthy counterparts. Particularly noteworthy was the finding that nine out of 10 women with early stage ovarian cancer have also documented the high scorer. "If we have a chance to pick up early stages of the disease by 0%, then you can say that would be a good test," said team member Maurie Markman, a medical oncologist. First, however, many more women with cancer of early stage ovarian must be tested to determine whether it would be useful to screen healthy women and people at high risk of developing ovarian cancer .
other experts consider these results with cautious optimism. James Roberts, a gynecologic oncologist at the medical School at Stanford University, would like to see a simple test has tried with more patients. by linking high levels of the APL to gynecological cancers, especially on stage ovarian cancer, "you have a much more treatable disease."
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