WHO agency confirms efficacy of screening women 25-65 to reduce mortality.

2004 JUN 3 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization, says screening women ages 25-65 for cervical cancer reduces their mortality risk from the disease.

Cancer of the cervix uteri is the second most common cancer among women worldwide, with about 500,000 new patients women diagnosed and 250,000 deaths every year. Almost 80% of the cases occur in developing countries and in many regions, cervix cancer is the most common cancer in women.

"One of the key missions of the International Agency for Research on Cancer," says Peter Boyle, the recently appointed director of the agency, "is to provide preventive tools and methods particularly to those countries that lack proper resources of their own."

A Working Group of the IARC, chaired by Nicholas Day of Cambridge, U.K., was convened in Lyon, France, from April 20-27, 2004, to evaluate the effectiveness of cervical cancer screening in reducing incidence of and mortality from the disease.

The Working Group concluded that there is sufficient evidence that screening for cervical cancer by cytological examination of Pap smear cell samples does prevent death. The experts, however, emphasized that to achieve this goal optimally, an organized program with quality control of every key step of the entire process is a prerequisite. In such circumstances, it was estimated that an 80% reduction in mortality can be achieved. Such a screening program should cover women aged 25-65; women need not undergo screening more often than once every 3 years up to the age of 49 and every 5 years thereafter.

The Working Group also concluded that advances such as improved handling of the cell samples and use of computers for cytological analysis could also reduce the incidence of invasive cervix cancer and death from the disease.

Cervical cancer is a rare outcome of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, a common and mainly sexually transmitted infection, which accounts for over 95% of all cervical cancer cases. This infectious pathway opens new avenues for control by means of screening and vaccination. In this context, tests for the presence of viral DNA in a sample of epithelial cells have been established as a step toward identifying potentially precancerous conditions. The Group concluded that there is sufficient evidence that the HPV ...