NEW OVARIAN CANCER DETECTION
Nearly 4 years ago, Janice Paulshock’s world came crashing down when she learnt that she had ovarian cancer.
“I was completely shocked. At that time my husband was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and I thought, this can’t happen to us, we have three young children,” says Janice.
At only 39 years of age, Janice was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Initially, she felt a lump on her side and a cat scan revealed an ovarian mass. After a full hysterectomy and several rounds of chemotherapy, Janice was in remission, but then battled another reoccurrence 3 years ago. She’s now is remission once again.
“I could walk to the mail box and get killed with a car. No one knows, and I figured that if I just hold on to some treatment, there are chances of Hopkins or another hospital coming up with a new cure for the disease,” says Janice.
At Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, where Janice was treated, researchers are aggressively trying to improve detection of ovarian cancer, which would translate into better chances of survival. Scientists have designed a blood test to detect ovarian cancer using three proteins found in common in the blood of women with the disease. Using advanced protein chip technology their preliminary studies suggest there is a specific molecular makeup exclusive to this deadly cancer.
“We were able to find these 3 proteins among the thousands and thousands of proteins found in the blood. In combining all of them into one test, we can detect ovarian cancer, particularly early stages of ovarian cancer, with much better accuracy than previously known,” explains Dr. Daniel Chan of Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
Ovarian cancer is often called a silent killer because its symptoms can be vague.
“Unfortunately, we don’t get people early enough. We tend to catch it in a later stage. Over half the people are either discovered in either stage 3 or 4. And at that point, the possibility of a cure or long term survival is a lot lower,” says gynecologist, Dr. Robert Giuntoli of Johns Hopkins.
The symptoms of ovarian cancer that some women experience are urinary frequency and abdominal bloating. Many don’t have any pain, and a mass is discovered during a pelvic exam.
Currently, the only test available is the CA-125 blood test. Unfortunately, it’s not very reliable in detecting early stage ovarian cancer, since CA-125, a protein found in blood, is only elevated 40-50% of the time in women with stage 1 ovarian cancer. There are also too many false-positives to use it as a general screening tool.
“What we are looking for is sort of the grand slam or the perfect test that detects everyone with ovarian cancer and doesn’t detect people who don’t have ovarian cancer,” says Dr. Giuntoli.
Dr. Chan and his researchers are confident they’re on their way.
“This test for three blood proteins allows us to detect early stage of ovarian cancer with much higher sensitivity and I would say approximately 80% of the women will be correctly identified,” says Dr. Chan.
Janice with her indomitable spirit continues to be a fighter, and believes that one day early detection will be perfected.
“Eventually, one day when you go to your gynecologist you’ll have a prescription for your mammogram, you’ll get your pap smear and you’ll just do your blood test for ovarian cancer,” says Janice.
Dr. Chan and his colleagues emphasize that the ovarian cancer test will not be commercially available for screening the population at large until completion of further validation studies in larger groups of patients.
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