OPINION:
Reality TV star Diem Brown died earlier this month of advanced ovarian cancer after a nearly decade long struggle against the disease. She was only 34 years old. Her courage and refusal to give up was her emblem, and it stands as an inspiration to cancer sufferers everywhere. In my book “The Inner Pulse,” I found many examples of patients who were more effectively able to fight their disease because of their courage and inner strength. Diem was certainly a prime example of this.
Despite modern medical advances, ovarian cancer is still a big killer of women. By the time it is diagnosed it is usually too late to cure. The main reason is because the ovaries are buried deep within a woman’s body, there are no characteristic symptoms for early ovarian cancer, and no reliable marker to make a doctor suspicious.
A man’s testes by comparison, are easy to examine and to discover a small abnormal nodule, and though the prostate is buried deep within the body and a cancerous prostate rarely causes symptoms, the PSA test is much more sensitive for early prostate cancer than the CA-125 test is for early ovarian cancer.
It is not surprising therefore that ovarian cancer has a high death rate; in fact according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among American women while ovarian cancer is only the 8th most common cancer with 22,000 new cases diagnosed every year, at the same time it is the 5th leading cause of cancer death with over 14,000 deaths. Put another way, though ovarian cancer accounts for only 3% of cancer in women, at the same time it causes more death than any other cancer of the female reproductive system.
Early symptoms are non-specific and are certainly not reliable indicators. Bloating, abdominal pain, feeling full quickly or loss of appetite, and urinary problems are the most common.
Help is on the way. Studies of abnormal proteins, known as proteomics, are promising at detecting cancer early and genetic markers are beginning to differentiate who is most at risk. Scientists have also determined that most ovarian cancers originate in the fallopian tubes, which will help guide new imaging studies.
In terms of treatment, targeted antibodies are being developed to seek out for destruction abnormal proteins on the surface of the ovarian cell. Chemicals known as PARP inhibitors block the mechanism for rapid tumor growth. Genetic treatments will reverse the mutations that lead to the cancer.
But that is the future. In the meantime a young woman with ovarian cancer is still faced with the only methods of trying to poison the cancer with chemotherapy before you destroy the body along with it. That’s why the story of Diem Brown is so extraordinary. Never giving up, hopeful that better treatments would come along, Diem continued the fight for almost ten years. She was an ambassador for the inspiring organizationwww.standup2cancer.org which has raised millions for cancer research, and she founded a registry for gift giving for all chronic disease, www.medgift.com.
The battle against ovarian cancer has really just begun. Diem Brown was one of the strongest early foot soldiers.
Dr. Marc Siegel is an Associate Professor of Medicine at New York University School of Medicine, columnist, and Fox News medical correspondent.
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