CA125 May Be Useful Ovarian Cancer Screening

A screening strategy that evaluates change of carbohydrate antigen 125 (CA125) levels over time may be able to identify early-stage ovarian cancer, according to a study published online Aug. 26 in Cancer. To date, no strategy has proven effective for the early detection for ovarian cancer. CA125 marker, which has been used to predict ovarian cancer recurrence, is imperfect as it can be elevated for other reasons potentially leading to false positives as a screening tool. “Ovarian cancer screening requires invasive surgery and removal of the ovaries in order to make a definitive diagnosis. Therefore, any screening strategy for ovarian cancer must minimize false positives in order to decrease the number of unnecessary operations,” write the authors, led by Karen Lu, M.D., from M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Complicating screening efforts is the low prevalence of the disease in the general population. To achieve a positive predictive value (PPV) of 10 percent, a generally accepted limit for balancing risk with benefit, the authors say the screening strategy must exhibit a sensitivity greater than 75 percent for asymptomatic disease and a specificity of more than 99.6 percent. In the current study, postmenopausal women (aged 50 to 74 years) had […]