NEW YORK (Reuters) -- For the first time, healthy women at risk for ovarian cancer have been found to have an abnormally high number of cellular changes in their ovaries compared with women who do not have an increased risk of such cancer.
The finding could help unravel the biological steps that can lead to ovarian cancer, which was diagnosed in 26,700 U.S. women in 1996, and led to 14,800 deaths. While the five-year survival rate for ovarian cancer is 91% with early diagnosis, the majority of women are diagnosed at later stages, when the survival rate falls to 23%.
Understanding the disease process is "the first step in the development of both early diagnosis and better therapies," according to Dr. William Hoskins, of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The new study is a "valuable contribution to our knowledge about the biology of ovarian tissue in women at increased risk of developing ovarian cancer," wrote Hoskins in an editorial accompanying the study.
The researchers made the discovery in 20 women who had their ovaries removed in an effort to prevent cancer. The women were at high risk because they had a strong family history of the disease (anywhere from 2 to 22 relatives with ovarian and/or breast cancer), and in some cases carried BRCA1, the recently discovered cancer-susceptibility gene, according to the report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The researchers found that 75% to 85% of women at risk for ovarian cancer had two to three changes in their ovarian tissue, compared to just 10% to 30% of women who had their ovaries removed for other reasons. Some of changes included abnormal cell organizations, cysts, and abnormal cell growth. The cancer-prone ovaries also had a greater risk of containing previously undiagnosed and microscopic benign or borderline tumors. In two cases, malignant cells were found.
But the authors note that the research is not completely fool-proof because the pathologists examining the tissue knew which patients were carriers of BRCA1 and which were not, noted senior investigator Dr. Thomas Hamilton of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. This may have led them to analyze tissue from these women more closely. More study is needed to confirm the new results, Hamilton said.
SOURCE: Journal of the National Cancer Institute (1996;88:1810-1819)
