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This is the VOA SpecialEnglish Science Report.
American medical researchers say they have developed a simpleblood test that can tell if a woman has ovarian cancer. Cancer ofthe ovaries is one of the most difficult cancers to find and cure.That is because there has been no effective way to tell if a womanhas the disease until it has spread throughout the body.
Researchers say about twenty-four-thousand American women arefound to have ovarian cancer every year. About fourteen-thousand ofthem die each year. Cancer experts say that ninety percent of womenwith ovarian cancer could be cured if the cancer was found early.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute and the Food andDrug Administration developed the new test. It requires a very smallamount of blood and gives results in thirty minutes. The test looksfor a group of proteins that is present in the blood of women withovarian cancer. The researchers reported their work in the Britishpublication The Lancet.
In the study, the researchers took blood from fifty women knownto have ovarian cancer and fifty women without the disease. Theyexamined the blood samples using a computer program developed by theCorrelogic Systems Company of Bethesda, Maryland. The computerprogram found a group of five proteins in the blood samples of allthe cancer victims.
The researchers then looked for that protein group inone-hundred-sixteen other blood samples. Fifty of the blood sampleswere from women with ovarian cancer. Sixty-six were from womenwithout the disease. The researchers did not know which samples camefrom which women. The test correctly identified all fifty cases ofovarian cancer, including eighteen that were in the earliest formsof the disease. However, the test falsely identified three healthywomen as having ovarian cancer.
The researchers now plan to do more tests involving largernumbers of women. They say it will be several years before the testcould be used for all women. They say it will most likely be usedfirst for women who have a greater than normal chance of developingovarian cancer.
The researchers say their testing method could be used to findother cancers, too. They are working to develop similar tests tofind cancers of the pancreas, breast and prostate.
This VOA Special English Science Report was written by NancySteinbach.