New Test for Ovarian Cancer

Dr. Judith Paley

100% sensitivity and specificity! You can't get much better than that. When a test for ovarian cancer delivers its data with this degree of accuracy, positive results always indicate that the tumor is present and negative results reassure there is no malignant ovarian activity.

Not only does this test for ovarian cancer hold promise for top-notch accuracy, California investigators found that results may also correlate with the severity of the disease. Check out "Diagnosed in a fingerstick!" below.
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This information is intended to be general in nature and should not be relied upon for specific treatment. If you need medical attention, please contact your personal physician's office for an appointment.
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Diagnosed in a fingerstick!

The news on ovarian cancer detection thus far has not been encouraging. The best indicator that ovarian trouble is brewing, doctors assure us, is vague abdominal symptoms. Now how many times per day do you have vague stirrings in your lower abdomen? If you obsess about this, and believe me there are any number of women who do, you'd be worrying on a regular basis about the health of your ovaries. Furthermore, we're told, the best available blood test known as CA 125 is notoriously unreliable. And another blood test for ovarian cancer proteins has been mired in the FDA approval machinery for a couple of years.

So good news in ovarian cancer diagnosis out of the University of California, Los Angeles is particularly welcome. Scientists there have identified four proteins* that have distinctive abnormal patterns in the blood of ovarian cancer patients even at an early stage. Dr. Robin Farias-Eisner and his colleagues have also included CA125 in the diagnostic panel.

When all five tests were performed in a small trial, the results were highly accurate in identifying the presence of ovarian cancer. Not only did the test predict disease, the scientists found that a higher degree of protein abnormalities correlated with the severity of the disease.

The UCLA doctors are working with bioengineers to develop a handheld device which would use just a drop of blood from a fingerstick puncture to perform the test. Larger clinical trials will soon be launched which may result in the launch of this test to the public within three years.

*The proteins are thetransthyretin, hemoglobin protein, apolipoprotein A-I , and transferrin in case you're curious.
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Oxidative Stress

Think of it as a dangerous, biological seesaw that you teeter on after every festive meal. Pro-oxidants vs. antioxidants. Delicious pro-oxidants ooze in--think Dr. Atkins as in butter, cheese, and steak, then bam! your cells are slammed by a heavy load of ROS (radical oxygen species, of course). If you're lucky, however, the blueberry topping on the cheesecake will clamber onto the other side in a helpful, balancing, antioxidant sort of way.

Dr. Helmut Sies, current president of the Oxygen Club of California, notes the obvious: "In Western societies, a significant part of the day is spent in the postprandial state." In other words, if some of us aren't eating, it's because we just ate. Depending on the composition of the last meal down, great gobs of saturated or trans fatty acids (hyperlipidemia) and too much sugar (hyperglycemia) may then travel through the bloodstream like gangs of pro-oxidant thugs, assaulting our blood vessels, rendering them stunned and constricted.

The whole mess adds up to postprandial oxidative stress: excess oxidative load vs. a weakened antioxidant network. But Dr. Sies does not leave us hopeless and hungry but rather assures us that we can attenuate this biological warfare after meals by taking dietary antioxidants with our high-fat meals.

So drink red wine with your Big Mac as the polyphenols from wine, cocoa, or tea improve blood vessel function and lower the tendency of LDL-cholesterol to oxidize. And throw down an antioxidant supplement such as an E, C, or selenium with your chocolate mousse.

Keeping up with the experts

Did you get up and go take a vitamin C after reading the previous article? That's the story of my life, can't get a thing done for racing downstairs to eat, drink, or perform the latest health tip from my daily reading. Here's a summary of today's tips and trips to the kitchen:

  1. "Drinking coffee reduces the risk for cardiovascular disease, according to the results of a study following more than 41,000 women for 15 years." --American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
    Check, no adjustments needed here. Already drinking coffee.
  2. "Carotenoids, particulary lycopene, are excellent quenchers of singlet oxygen." --Current Topics in Nutraceutical Research
    Gad, I hate singlet oxygen. But haven't taken lycopene supplement in days. Off to pop a 10 mg supplement with grape juice.
  3. "Carotenoids also effectively scavenge peroxyl radicals and have been shown to act synergistically in this action with vitamin E." --Current Topics in Nutraceutical Research
    If I'd read the entire paragraph about lycopene before running downstairs to take a lycopene capsule, I wouldn't need to run down this second time to take a vitamin E pill.
  4. "Calcium and vitamin D are the foundation of the house, and you can't build a house without a foundation." --Neil Binkley, MD, Osteoporosis Clinical Center and Research Program, University of Wisconsin
    Dang, forgot to take the building blocks this a.m., off to get vitamin D and calcium. All this stair-climbing is hard on the knees. Better go get the glucosamine.
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    Researching the obvious

    I mentioned some time ago that researchers found that patients who recognized their doctors were more satisfied with their care. I kid you not; Mayo Clinic investigators actually posted pictures of the patient's attending physicians on their hospital room walls to confirm that the ability to pick the doc on their case out of a line-up improved the inpatient experience.

    In another study quoted in a remote edition of this newsletter, doctors found that drinking coffee or napping was helpful for night driving. They didn't, however, put the test subjects on the road but propped them up in a driving simulator instead, noting thereafter which ones fell off their seats from snoozing and which group kept simulating. Fortunately, the French have finally taken this investigation to a satisfying conclusion, and we know for sure whether napping and caffeinating are good strategies for the summer road-trip season.

    In fact, those subjects who napped for thirty minutes before a 125 mile road trip between 2 and 3:30 a.m. were 2.9 times less likely to stray sleepily across the median line. Better yet, a jolt of real coffee kept the volunteer drivers on their side of the road 3.7 times better than the decaf group. One study limitation noted was that there was no 'placebo nap' group. No mention is made of how the Bordeaux investigators decided which one of their group would accompany the tired and the caffeine-free on their early a.m.drives.
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Denver Doc Online

Do you miss the weekly e-mailed editions of years gone by? Have a look at www.femailhealthnews.blogspot.com. You'll find "The latest in medical research -- the relevant, the bizarre, and the humorous" with new information posted several times each week. Recent postings include information on newly-approved Chantix, Amitiza (a moving name for a drug that could get you moving), and Oracea, plus a look into the daily agony of trying to dress like a doctor.

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