Simple test to detect ovarian cancer

A SIMPLE urine test could prevent thousands of ovarian cancer deaths.

The disease is known as the ‘silent killer’ as it is often detected once it has spread.

But now British researchers have identified a protein that is produced when the cancer is in its early stages.

They hope to find a way of detecting the protein in a urine test similar to the one used to confirm pregnancy.

Each year more than 7,000 women in the UK are diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Our survival rate is among the lowest in Europe at about 31 per cent.

Yet if the cancer can be detected at stage one, while it is confined to the ovary, survival rates are vastly improved. Most ovarian cancer is detected at stage three when the disease has begun to spread to surrounding tissue such as the womb. By then just one in five survive.

Dr Barbara Guinn and her colleagues at the University of Hull located high levels of the protein in tumours in patients in the early stages of ovarian cancer.

Identifying the biomarker in a simple urine test should allow for earlier detection, diagnosis and treatment. Dr Guinn told the British Science Festival in Hull: ‘A stage three diagnosis can mean survival rates of 20 per cent, but with early detection, they can be around 90 per cent.’

So far in tissue samples, the new biomarker, named OCP for ovarian cancer protein, has been found in 18 per cent of stage one tumours and 36 per cent at stage two. At stage three, levels fell to 17 per cent.

Dr Guinn said if the biomarker could be found in urine, it would allow ovarian cancer to be detected at clinics after women undergo the menopause.

She said: ‘We are on our last step so we are very close. Our biggest hope is we will find this protein in urine and provide a screening method in women’s clinics.’