The researchers of this work, including in particular Dr. Luis Diaz, assistant professor of cancerology at Johns Hopkins University, point out that further studies are necessary before this promising test can be generalized. This genetic test detected all endometrial cancers in the women in the study (44) and nine of the 44 ovarian cancers in the other group of women.
This test should now be tested on healthy women to determine if it can reveal the first signs of ovarian cancer and endometrium.
“Our genomic sequencing approach could have the potential to detect these cancers on a large scale and inexpensively,” says Dr Diaz.
Endometrial cancer is most often discovered at an advanced stage, when the chances of survival are low: out of 22,000 cancers of this type diagnosed in the United States in 2012, 15,500 deaths were recorded, which makes it imperative to develop new early detection tests.
Ovarian cancer still kills eight thousand women a year in the United States.
These two cancers are diagnosed in nearly 70,000 women per year in the United States, a third of whom die from them.
