A simple blood test combined with an ultrasound exam may help doctors catch ovarian cancer while it’s still treatable.
Because it strikes with only a few, if any symptoms and by the time a woman knows she has it. It is often in its advanced stages.
Currently there are no established screening tests for ovarian cancer.
Researchers followed more than four thousand mostly white postmenopausal women over an eleven year period.
They used a blood test that measures a protein shed by tumor cells called c-a-125 and then an ultrasound to give doctors a look at the ovaries.
This method appeared nearly one hundred percent accurate at ruling out false positives.
a much larger study including more than two hundred thousand women using the two-screening method is underway now.
Those final results will be released in 2015. You can find more information in the journal cancer.