Cervical screening tests could help detect ovarian, breast cancers

Cervical screening tests could be used to find ovarian and breast cancers, according to international researchers.

Ovarian cancer is responsible for the largest proportion of deaths associated with gynaecological cancers. Currently, 75% of ovarian cancers are diagnosed at a late stage, when the tumours have spread, and being able to detect the disease earlier may improve treatment outcomes. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in females and is usually detected using mammography followed by a biopsy. Previous research has suggested that DNA changes could be used to predict the risk of developing these cancers.

Martin Widschwendter and colleagues developed a test that looks for epigenetic changes (changes in patterns of gene activity) in cervical screening samples. The authors measured 14,000 epigenetic changes (molecular modifications that alter patterns of gene expression without the DNA itself being altered) in the screening samples. The team tested this technique, first with a group of about 1100 women including 242 with ovarian cancer. They say the test was able to identify 71.4% of women under 50 and 54.5% over 50 who had ovarian cancer. The findings were further validated in an additional cohort of women, where 47 had ovarian cancer and 227 did not, and found that women with higher scores may have an increased risk of ovarian cancer.

In a second paper, the researchers performed a similar experiment where they say they were able to identify women with breast cancer among two cohorts. They initially analysed epigenetic changes in cervical cell samples from 329 women with breast cancer with a poor prognosis and 869 women without breast cancer. They found they were able to identify women with breast cancer based on an epigenetic signature. They confirmed this finding in a smaller set of samples from 113 breast cancer patients and 225 women without breast cancer.

The authors indicate their findings suggest that using epigenetic signatures may aid in the detection of these cancers. However, the authors conclude that further research and large-scale prospective clinical trials are needed to determine whether these tests could predict the likelihood of women developing either of these cancers. Findings of both the papers have been published in Nature Communications.

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