2 tests cut cervical cancer risk in poor countries
Posted on: Wednesday, 16 November 2005, 17:32 CST
By Gene Emery
BOSTON (Reuters) - While women in most Western countries are regularly screened for cervical cancer, just two health clinic visits in a lifetime should halve the cancer risk for women in developing regions, a study showed on Wednesday.
The finding "adds strong support to changing the long-standing perception that screening will be too difficult to implement and sustain in the world's poorest countries," said Sue Goldie, who led the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Although cervical cancer deaths are uncommon in the United States -- there are only about 4,000 per year -- they are a leading cause of cancer death in poor regions of the world.
Goldie and her colleagues concluded that a one-time screening at age 35, combined with surgical treatment for women with an abnormal result, would cut the lifetime risk of cervical cancer by 25 to 36 percent. A second examination, at age 40, would reduce the risk by about 50 percent.
Goldie, of the Harvard School of Public Health, said one test that would be practical in the nations studied -- India, Peru, Thailand, Kenya and South Africa -- looks for human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus that causes cancer in cervical tissue.
The other involves looking at the cervix after it has been treated with acetic acid, which turns precancerous tissue white.
The best-known test for cervical cancer is the Pap smear, but it requires laboratory facilities and highly trained workers to read the smears, making it impractical in developing countries.
The Goldie team said that with costs ranging from $24 to $111 per screening, depending on the country, "these strategies would be among the most cost-effective interventions available."
Researchers are testing a vaccine against the types of HPV responsible for 70 percent of cervical cancers.
"Within a few years, we expect to have multiple tools not only to improve cervical-cancer screening, but also to restrict the spread of its viral cause," said Mark Schiffman and Philip Castle of the National Cancer Institute in a Journal commentary.
"Because it is feasible to prevent cervical cancer and to avert the suffering it causes so many women and their families, cervical cancer deserves to be a high priority among global efforts to prevent cancer," they said.
Source: REUTERS
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