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<p>The Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funds a range of
research relating to ovarian cancer diagnosis and testing. The NIHR Health Technology
Assessment programme is currently funding a £1 million project on refining ovarian
cancer test accuracy scores. The research aims to identify, refine and validate tests
and risk prediction models that estimate the probability of having ovarian cancer
for post and premenopausal women with suspected ovarian cancer, applicable to secondary
and primary care. It also aims to define thresholds of predicted risk from the test
and models that inform decisions for patient management. The project began in October
2014 and the final report is expected to be published in April 2019.</p><p> </p><p>
</p><p> </p><p>The United Kingdom Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening
began in 2000. 200,000 post-menopausal women aged 50 to 74 have been randomised in
12 UK centres. Half the women have been screened, either by annual CA125 blood test
or annual trans-vaginal ultrasound, with the remainder as the control group. The study
is being funded by the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK - the Department
is providing the National Health Service costs of the study.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
</p><p>Final results of the study showing the impact of ovarian cancer screening on
mortality are due to be published in January 2016.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The
NIHR has recently approved £1.3 million funding for a trial looking at whether a newer
version of magnetic resonance imaging, multi-parametric MR (mpMR), may be more beneficial
for women with ovarian cancer pre-operatively than a CT scan. Small studies suggest
mpMR is better at discriminating ovarian cancer from non-cancer (benign ovarian masses)
and in seeing how much the disease has spread. This is important for planning the
type of surgery and whether surgery will be successful in removing disease.</p><p>
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