Australian researchers are probing the way hormonal changes in older women can provide a “stimulus” for ovarian cancer, in the hope of finding a new way to combat the tough-to-treat disease.
Despite medical advances, the survival rate for women five years after an ovarian cancer diagnosis is still just 40 per cent and it remains the most lethal of the gynaecological cancers.
As part of the effort to improve this, Dr Deborah Marsh and her research colleagues have focused on the cancer’s interaction with a hormone known to be at elevated levels in post-menopausal women.
Advertisement: Story continues below “These are hormones called gonadotropins which have perfectly normal roles in healthy reproduction and are involved in helping you ovulate,” Dr Marsh told AAP on Friday.
“But as women get older the levels of these hormones become elevated and this correlates with an increasing risk of ovarian cancer.
“… We’re not saying that gonadotropins cause ovarian cancer but we are saying that we think it can contribute to it.”
The research, undertaken at the Kolling Institute of Medical Research at the Royal North Shore Hospital and University of Sydney, studied the interaction between ovarian cancer cells and gonadotropins in a cell culture.
The hormones were seen to dramatically “speed up” the growth of the cells and also change the way they moved, making them more likely to “migrate”.
“It’s a stimulus that doesn’t normally exist,” Dr Marsh said.
“We’re finding out how the hormones are working in the cell and this phenomenon of speeding up growth … to work out how you can then best stop that over-growth.”
The research could ultimately point to a therapy that targets gonadotropin levels, or interrupts the hormone’s interaction with cancer cells, in a bid to switch off its accelerating effect.
It is a far-off prospect, but such a therapy could be used alongside existing ovarian cancer treatments to improve their potency.
Around one in77 women will develop ovarian cancer by the age of 85, compared to one in eight for breast cancer which has around a 90 per cent survival rate at five years post diagnosis.
Ovarian cancer is also tough to treat because it was often not detected until it was well advanced, a problem Dr Marsh said Australian women could help to turn around.
“It’s not really a silent killer – women are getting symptoms but they might be brushed off as just common, everyday (problems) like abdominal bloating, constipation, heart burn, back pain,” she said.
“Women know their own bodies the best and if you feel something is wrong, go see the doctor.”
February is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month.
A paper outlining gonadotropin’s effect on ovarian cancer cells is published in the journal Endocrine-Related Cancer.
Danny Rose
The Sydney Morning Herald