New Test May Detect Cervical Cancer Sooner

It is the number two cancer killer of women worldwide.
Tragically, it will claim the lives of over 4,000 women this year in the United States alone. Tragic because cervical cancer is easily treatable, when detected early. According to Thomas Cox, Director of the Gynecology Clinic of the University of California "Cervical cancer is the first cancer that seems to have a single necessary cause. By necessary cause that means that human papillomavirus or HPV must be present for the majority of these cancers to occur. In fact it may be necessary for all of the cancers to occur except for a few rare types of cervical cancer."

The traditional method of testing for cancer of the cervix is a PAP test. While the PAP test has helped significantly reduce cervical cancer, it only detects cell abnormalities that may indicate potential pre-cancer or cancer. It does not test for human papillomavirus. The FDA has recently approved a test that can detect the "DNA signature" of HPV. Known as a DNA Pap it combines molecular testing technology developed by the Digene Corporation with a traditional Pap test. Studies have shown that the DNA Pap can identify with almost 100% certainty those women who are at low or no current risk of cervical disease or cancer. Doctor Carolyn Runowicz of the St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital explains the advantage of a PAP test that can also detect the presence of HPV. "When you do just one test for example, just cervical cytology, you can miss up to 50% of the pathology that exists. We know the PAP smear is not perfect, and one of the reasons that you did it annually was to decrease that false negative rate where there was something there, but the PAP smear was not able to pick it up for a variety of reasons, when you combine it with HPV testing, you decrease the possibility of missing lesions"

A cancer survivor interviewed for this piece had this to say about her experience: "…I was one of the lucky ones. I was diagnosed early by a very competent doctor, had a great support system and really good healthcare. So even though the diagnosis was a difficult period in my life I became very healthy again, so it's a positive story."