A new way to test for cervical cancer is more accurate than a pap smear and identified more dangerous lesions, an Italian study showed on Tuesday.
Researchers used the traditional test for the human papilloma virus that causes cervical cancer and combined it with another that indicated specific cancer-causing activity in cells, said Guglielmo Ronco, a cancer epidemiologist at the Centre for Cancer Prevention in Turin, who led the study.
A simple test for a protein called P16INK4A provided a biomarker showing cell changes that indicated a woman likely has pre-cancerous lesions, Ronco and colleagues reported in the journal Lancet Oncology. ~ Reuters, 9 Sept 2008
Cervical cancer accounts for 12 percent of all cancers in women throughout the world, and 80 percent of all those cases are found in developing countries like the Philippines. Among Philippine women, cervical cancer is the 2nd leading cause of cancer deaths.
