AguiLeon Health Tech

Tests commonly recommended to screen healthy women for ovarian cancer do more harm than good and should not be performed, a panel of medical experts said Monday. The screenings -- blood tests for a substance linked to cancer, and ultrasound scans to examine the ovaries -- do not lower the death rate from the disease, and they yield many false-positive results that lead to unnecessary operations with high complication rates, the panel said. "There is no existing method of screening for ovarian cancer that is effective in reducing deaths," said Dr. Virginia Moyer , chairwoman of the expert panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. "In fact, a high percentage of women who undergo screening experience false-positive test results and consequently may be subjected to unnecessary harms, such as major surgery." The advice against testing applies only to healthy women with an average risk of ovarian cancer, not to those with suspicious symptoms or those at h

Obesity is also a risk factor among women who have never taken HRT, say international researchers. Previous studies have suggested a link, but there has been conflicting evidence. The latest research, published in the journal PLoS Medicine, analysed all worldwide data on the topic. It looked at 47 epidemiological studies in 14 countries, including about 25,000 women with ovarian cancer and more than 80,000 women without ovarian cancer. Lead researcher Prof Valerie Beral of the Oxford University Epidemiology Unit told the BBC: "By bringing together the worldwide evidence, it became clear that height is a risk factor." She said there was also a clear relationship between obesity and ovarian cancer in women who had never taken HRT. "Ovarian cancer can clearly be added to the list [of cancers linked to obesity]," she added. Sarah Williams, health information officer at Cancer Research UK, said the study produced a clearer picture of the factors that could