2013年9月9日訊/生物谷BIOON/ --作爲一種常見癌症之一，卵巢癌患者大約有70%是在其癌症晚期被發現的。而此時的患者長期生存率則不到30%。因此科學家一直在試圖尋找一種能夠儘快檢測到卵巢癌蛛絲馬跡的生物標記物。來自Anderson Cancer Center的研究人員最近發現一種名爲CA125的生物標記物可能會幫助人們完成這一夢想。研究人員在對超過4000名婦女進行檢查研究後發現卵巢癌會導致患者體內CA125含量上升。同時，卵巢癌高風險人羣其體內CA125含量明顯高於正常人羣。現在研究人員正在等待英國一項調查人數達50000人的調查結果以做進一步的評估。(生物谷Bioon.com)
詳細英文報道：
By the time ovarian cancer is typically diagnosed, the prognosis is bleak. About 7 in 10 cases are identified in late stages, when women have less than a 30% shot at long-term survival. But investigators at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston say that a biomarker in the blood--carbohydrate antigen 125, or CA125--offers a shot at a relatively low-cost approach to identifying the disease at an early stage, while the chances of survival are much higher.
The link between elevated levels of CA125 and ovarian cancer is well understood. In this study of more than 4,000 women, investigators tracked changes in the level of the protein each year over a period of 10 years, according to the Los Angeles Times. If the protein level jumped, the women were put into a higher-risk group and then tested every three months. If levels continued to increase, the women were assigned to a high-risk group and given a transvaginal ultrasound to see if there was a distinct need for exploratory surgery. A total of 117 patients were assigned to the high-risk group and 10 of them had exploratory surgery. Four of those women had early-stage ovarian cancer, one had endometrial cancer, two had nonmalignant tumors and three had benign cysts.
But the work is far from finished. Investigators are waiting for the results from a 50,000-patient study in the U.K., according to the BBC.
"Clinical practice definitely should not change from our study, but it gives us an insight--we didn't get a lot of false positives," researcher Dr. Karen Lu told the BBC. "There are two big questions--do we see cancers at an earlier stage and do we decrease the number of deaths."
來源：生物谷
