Views Behind the News

Progress in Detecting Ovarian Cancer?

What makes ovarian cancer so scary is not that it's inherently more deadly than many other kinds of cancer. If you catch it early, it can be highly treatable. But detecting it early is notoriously hard because the disease tends to hide, triggering few noticeable symptoms until it's so far advanced it's hard to stop.

Last summer the experts threw us a bone, acknowledging that most women with ovarian cancer do in fact have telltale symptoms: repeated bloating, abdominal discomfort, digestive troubles. Well, thanks, but some of us found that list maddeningly vague. Were we supposed to worry every time we felt gassy?

This time experts may be on to something more helpful. Gil Mor and his team of researchers at Yale report they've developed a simple blood test that identifies early-stage ovarian cancer with 99 percent accuracy. That news, which appears in the Feb. 15 issue of the journal Clinical Cancer Research, means we women may soon be able to be screened for ovarian cancer almost as routinely as we get our blood pressure checked.

The new test measures six blood proteins that, in combination, are strong markers of ovarian cancer's presence. Mor, an associate professor in Yale's department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences and the study's lead author, said the test, designed to be affordable, may be widely available later this year, pending results of a larger clinical trial in March.

But Debbie Saslow, breast and gynecologic cancer director of the American Cancer Society, greets the news with caution: Though there's hope that early detection of ovarian cancer will translate into more lives saved, that connection's not yet been fully established. And, he adds, we need to wait and see how that larger trial turns out before we start celebrating.

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