A growing threat from a ‘silent killer’
Print Edition
MEASURES must be taken to tackle the growing threat of ovarian cancer, which has become the most lethal form of the disease for women in China, a conference in Shanghai heard yesterday.
The incidence of ovarian cancer in local women is 7.1 in every 100,000, a figure that is similar to many developed countries.
The rise is attributable to a more urbanized and Westernized lifestyle, which is characterized by a low birth rate, long-term female hormone therapy to treat menopause symptoms, and a diet that is high in cholesterol.
The incidence of ovarian cancer has grown by 30 percent and the death rate has increased by 18 percent in the nation in the past decade.
Since it has no obvious symptoms in the early stages, about 70 percent of patients are diagnosed when they reach the terminal stage, medical experts told a conference on new tumor biomarkers for ovarian cancer detection in Shanghai yesterday.
“Ovarian cancer has the poorest successful treatment rate of all female cancers. There has been no major improvement in the five-year survival rate in the past 30 years because most cases have been identified in the late stages. So it is called the silent killer,” said Dr Wu Xiaohua, director of the gynecology department at Shanghai Cancer Center.
“Early detection is the most effective way to improve the survival rate. But current checking measures have some limitations.”
Experts said the newly identified and adopted ovarian cancer biomarker HE4 is a useful tool that is expected to increase the accuracy of ovarian cancer detection
to 90 percent.
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