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REDINGTON BEACH, Fla. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- A mammogram detects breast cancer. A Pap test detects cervical cancer. But there's not a test to detect ovarian cancer in the early stages. That's why six out of 10 women with ovarian cancer die. But new research could offer a simple screening test that catches the cancer earlier.
Diane Miller lives in fear ... a fear of cancer. Her father had colon cancer. Her sister died of lung cancer, and her twin sister had brain cancer.
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But with that fear came something different. "There was just something bothering me," Miller says. She had an exam and blood test called the CA-125 to check for ovarian cancer. It was negative. But she pushed her doctor to remove her ovaries because the test is only accurate about 60 percent of the time.
After surgery, Miller got the news -- she had ovarian cancer. "I'm one of the lucky ones because it was found real early -- stage 1 -- almost unheard of," she says.
Her prognosis is good because the cancer was caught before it spread. That's not the case for most women diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
"Unfortunately, there are no reliable, accurate ways to detect all ovarian cancers," Patricia Kruk, Ph.D., a cell molecular biologist at University of South Florida/H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, tells Ivanhoe.
But Kruk and her team may have found one. They looked at a protein in the urine called the BCL-2 and studied samples from women with and without ovarian cancer. "Regardless of the stage, the BCL-2 urinary levels were at least 10-times greater than women without ovarian cancer," she says.
And the results were more than 90 percent accurate. Kruk says it might become the standard for ovarian cancer, for example, like mammograms are for breast cancer or Pap tests are for cervical cancer.
Miller says, "If research can come up with something to determine this cancer early, women will have a chance. I have a chance, and I'm grateful." She wants to give back, so she journals her story in hopes to educate other women about this silent killer.
The research was a pilot study, but study authors say the results are so impressive that they are currently looking for funding to expand the study to a larger clinical trial. In the future, the test could be given to all women -- kind of like a Pap smear test is given now.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
If you would like more information, please contact:
Patricia Kruk, Ph.D
University of South Florida
Dept. of Pathology MDC-11
2901 Bruce B. Down Blvd
Tampa, FL 33612
(813) 974-3133
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