A new method for screening for ovarian cancer has been developed by researchers at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing, China, in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The research team describes the markers and methods used to develop the test in detail in a paper that was published in Cell Reports Medicine and titled “Profiling the metabolome of uterine fluid for early detection of ovarian cancer.”
219 patients with various stages of ovarian cancer or benign gynecological conditions provided the researchers with their uterine fluid. There were no healthy patients tested. Seven metabolites with strong ties to ovarian cancer were selected from the 1,213 that were analyzed.
The study finds that their seven-marker method has an overall accuracy of 88% when testing diagnostic ability, compared to 79% with the existing CA125 blood marker test.
“…not only reveals metabolic features in uterine fluid of gynecological patients but also establishes a noninvasive approach for the early diagnosis of ovarian cancer,” the researchers assert, adding that their study “…not only reveals metabolic features in uterine fluid of gynecological patients but also establishes a noninvasive approach.”
Although the test has a lower rate of false negatives than other blood tests, the study does not include a large control group of healthy women without cancer or benign gynecological conditions.
The test’s rate of false positives is unclear without healthy control. For each pathology case in the study, a control group of at least five healthy people would normally be expected, but the current study does not have one. This issue may be clarified by subsequent research.
The test for any pre-determination jumble screening strategy is recognizing a sickness and staying away from misleading upsides. Screening to catch disease markers before a diagnosis means that the screening method is applied to the majority of healthy populations, whereas a test taken only by individuals with diagnostic signs of a disease can be a significant confirmation.
Because ovarian cancer only affects about 1.3 percent of women in a population (at some point in their lifetime), the goal of a screening of 1,000 people would be to identify 13 or fewer women at risk for early symptoms.
Assume the test has a misleading positive rate of 12%. All things considered, within a similar population of 1,000, 120 extra ladies without hazards would likewise test positive, making the test under 10% exact and possibly causing caution and unnecessary intrusive analytic methods.
Even with false positive and false negative rates of 12%, a negative test result would be approximately 98% reliable if it were given to the general public. Approximately 12% of patients will receive false-negative results when the test is limited to those with diagnostic signals.
Although additional research may demonstrate otherwise, it is highly unlikely that a standalone diagnostic screening tool for ovarian cancer has been discovered for the general population.
More information: Pan Wang et al, Profiling the metabolome of uterine fluid for early detection of ovarian cancer, Cell Reports Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2023.101061
