When researchers measured Tu-Stroma in blood, they detected STIC in 92.3% of affected women and correctly identified 98.2% of healthy women.
A molecular signal in the blood helps identify microscopic changes that precede ovarian cancer, researchers have found, a potential diagnostic advance for a disease often discovered only after it has already spread.
The signal is an RNA molecule called Tu-Stroma. The study found that women with a precursor condition had elevated levels of it in their blood.
Ovarian cancer often begins with microscopic changes in the lining of the fallopian tubes. Those precancerous lesions are known as serous tubal intraepithelial carcinoma, or STIC.
In women with genetic risk factors for ovarian cancer, approximately 72% of positive results would be accurate, while negative results would be correct nearly 100% of the time, they reported.
The figures address a practical gap in care. Many decisions now rest on inherited risk, without a direct indication of whether precancerous lesions are already present.
“Today, decisions about preventive surgery are largely guided by inherited risk, without knowing whether precancerous lesions are actually present,” Madan said.
“We asked a fundamentally different question: What if we could identify the earliest molecular warning signs before invasive cancer even develops?” Gogna said in a statement.
The work points to a blood marker linked to lesions that form before invasive ovarian cancer, rather than to cancer found only after it has spread. Researchers said the signal could eventually add biological information that inherited-risk assessments do not provide.