Blood test spots ovarian cancer years before it is usually found

A blood test can spot the telltale signs of ovarian cancer before it is too late

By Alice Klein

A blood test that detects ovarian cancer in its early stages may reduce the deadliness of the disease.

Ovarian cancer is known as the “silent killer” because most patients don’t know they have it until it spreads to other organs and causes symptoms, at which point it is usually too late to treat.

Now, Martin Widschwendter at University College London and his colleagues have shown that the disease can be detected years earlier by looking for tell-tale DNA fragments that ovarian tumours leak into the bloodstream.

By analysing DNA fragments in 648 blood samples from healthy women and ovarian cancer patients, they were able to pinpoint 3 fragments that marked the presence of the disease.

In a follow-up study of 250 women, they showed they could identify those with