Developing technology ‘to help prevent’ cervical cancer

CERVICAL cancer could be largely prevented using existing or soon-to-be available technology because scientists better understand what causes the disease today.

Only modest resources are required, according to the seminar reported in yesterday’s edition of medical journal The Lancet.

The disease is the second most common cancer afflicting women worldwide.

About half a million women were diagnosed with it in 2002 and 275,000 of them died. A new understanding of what causes the cancer — a series of persistent viral infections — has allowed doctors to adopt more effective approaches to preventing the disease.

Professor Mark Schiffman, of the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, US, said: “Promising approaches to prevention have resulted from our new understanding that almost all cases are caused by persistent infection with about 15 genotypes of human papillomavirus (HPV).”

“Not only in cervical cancer, the most prevalent and important cancer in women in several developing countries, but also the societal importance of the disease is accentuated even further by the young average age at death, often when women are still raising families.

“Because of the importance of the cervical cancer problem and the feasibility of ameliorating it, we hope to see a major decrease in the numbers of women affected with this cancer within our lifetimes.”