Expected 97% accuracy in ovarian cancer detection: Study underway

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJun 15 2010

Dr Ananya Mandal, MD

Ovarian cancer is diagnosed in 1,400 Australian women each year and kills approximately 800. Around the world each year there are 230,000 new ovarian cancer cases and 142,000 deaths recorded.

Now scientists in Melbourne have found a more effective test to detect ovarian cancer and hope to commence trials soon. This new test will check for two additional biomarkers that may indicate ovarian cancer in addition to conventional tests. Until now levels of CA-125 (cancer antigen 125 or carbohydrate antigen 125) were tested for. CA-125 is a biomarker that may be elevated in the blood of some patients with specific types of cancers such as ovarian cancer and it gives an accuracy of 94% in detecting the disease.

If this new trial is a success with the addition of the new biomarkers the accuracy of detection for ovarian cancer may rise from 94 to 97% said ovarian cancer expert Professor Greg Rice.

More than 1,150 women worldwide are to be a part of this trial. “The idea is to improve the performance of the test, to be looking at its accuracy, to identify women with ovarian cancer hopefully earlier during the course of their disease,” Dr. Rice said. Australian ovarian cancer expert Associate Professor Lewis Perrin emphasized on effective early detection of the disease as the key. “Without early detection thousands of women will continue to die from ovarian cancer, a disease that, if detected early, is treatable,” he said. He continued to say that more often than not the cancer is detected late when chances of five year survival are around 46%. “If this disease is diagnosed at early stage, when it is contained within the ovary, the chance of surviving five years rises to nearly 90 percent,” Perrin said.

Once this new test proves successful in detecting 100% of ovarian cancer cases, health authorities will approve it for testing all populations. The test is developed by HealthLinx and manufactured as OvPlex ovarian cancer biomarker test.