Common virus suspect in cancer of cervix

Press, 28 March 1979, Page 9

Common virus suspect in cancer of cervix

NZPA-Reuter Daytona Beach, Florida A virus that is carried by as many as one woman in eight has come under suspicion as a possible promoter of cancer of the cervix, a cancer researcher has said. The virus, herpes virus type 11, has been found in tissue samples from twothirds of women with cervical cancer as opposed to fewer than one woman in 20 who was free of cancer, Dr James K. McDougall, of the University of Washington, has told an American Cancer Society seminar in Daytona Beach, Florida. The Cancer Society says cervical cancer will attack about 16,000 American women, and kill about 7400 of them, this year. The detection of the herpes virus raises hopes for a vaccine or for a more sensitive test for the cancer than the current pap smear, according to Dr McDougall although both possibilities will require much more research.

Dr McDougall said that as many as 80 per cent of American men and women were carriers of either the herpes type II virus, which causes a venereal disease, or its close relative, the type I virus that causes cold sores.

An overwhelming majority of these people harboured the virus in their bodies in an inactive form for years without ill effect, he said. But in some women, perhaps one in 10,000 the virus took a virulent form and caused a painful venereal disease that had recently surpassed syphilis in the number of its United States victims. The seminar was also told that doctors could now determine whether a breast cancer patient should have a simple mastectomy or more radical treatment. Dr Thomas Nealon, director of surgery at St Vincent’s Hospital, New York, said a recent study indicated that careful examination of the tumour could

predict the type of treatment needed.

The study involved examing tumours of 203 women with diagnosed breast cancer. Several factors, including the spread of th cancer into the lymph nodes and the growth of blood vessels from the tumour into surrounding tissues, were found to increase the risk that the disease would recur. Based on examination of tumour types, the researchers were able to divide the women into low-risk and high-risk groups. Their predictions proved highly accurate. Dr Nealon said women with breast cancer should be given a preliminary biopsy, a procedure in which a small amount of tumour is removed for examination. If the biopsy indicated the tumour was low-risk, the woman should receive conservative treatment, a simple mastectomy, he said. But if the indication was that she was high-risk, she should have radical surgery and radiation treatment.