How the Body's Natural Movements Can Stress Ovarian Cells

Ovarian cancer is one of the most dreaded diagnoses a woman can hear. Every year, thousands of women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the United States, and many are already in the advanced stages. This means that survival looks grim because cancer has already grown and spread to other parts of the body.

The key to understanding more about ovarian cancer is to understand how it begins. Read on to learn more about a recent study that observes the relationship between natural body fluid movements and cancer advancement.

The survival rate of ovarian cancer is low, especially because there isn’t yet a good way to detect it early

Ovarian cancer survival is low, and if we could find a way to detect the disease earlier, we could save a lot of women's lives. Why is it so difficult to catch this disease early? The disease causes only very subtle signs and symptoms in the beginning stages, and many women simply brush them off. Things like having to pee a little more frequently, getting full with smaller meals, and feeling tired all the time don't really scream ovarian cancer at all. Most of the time, these are really common symptoms of simply getting older or working too many hours at your job. A lot of women are also misdiagnosed with IBS. Unfortunately, these are the signs that women have to look out for when they are monitoring themselves for ovarian cancer.

It's not just the patients, it's the doctors too. Doctors have a really hard time diagnosing ovarian cancer early, not because they are incompetent, but because there's no good test right now that exists.

That's why research is so important. Scientists are working endlessly to try and find a better diagnostic test to detect early ovarian cancer. It's tough to move science forward though, especially when there isn't that much funding to go around. Though ovarian cancer is very deadly, awareness isn't as apparent as, say , for breast cancer, and community support in the form of donations and fundraising are really important for promoting research in this field.

This study can teach us more about how ovarian cancer begins

But we're still trying, and researchers from Virginia Tech are actually on to something kind of exciting. Doctors and scientists are working together to study whether shear stress can cause cells in the abdomen to become more cancerous. By understanding what triggers healthy cells to become cancerous, we might be able to find a better way to detect these changes and diagnose early-stage diseases.

The movement of fluid in our body is enough to promote the development of cancer in our cells

This particular study discovered that cancer cells that are in the abdomen become more aggressive when they are exposed to fluid shear stress. This is essentially forceful movement directly due to the body's fluids moving along and around the organs. They found that when they exposed healthy, non-cancerous cells to this type of stress, they also induced them to look more like cancer. It seems that fluid shear actually encourages cells to become more and more malignant.

Read on to learn more about this discovery and what it means for ovarian cancer.