The All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, has made testing of cervical cancer treatment simpler than ever before. An effortless blood test can help determine whether your cervical cancer is responding to treatment or whether it is relapsed. 

The research is at its early stages and has found fragments of the DNA of human papillomavirus (HPV) circulating in the blood, with high-level presence correlating with the size of the tumour. This virus is responsible for the vast majority of cervical cancer. As patients begin their treatment, the levels of the virus drop, indicating how the cancer cells are responding to the treatment.

Molecular Test

Doctors have used a very sensitive molecular test to detect trace amounts of DNA of the two most common high-risk HPV strains: HPV16 and HPV18. The test was conducted after selecting 60 cervical cancer patients randomly who had not started their treatment. Samples were also collected from 10 healthy women to compare the results with.

Research at AIIMS can be a significant development in the treatment of cervical cancer, which is the second most common cancer amongst women in India, with more than 95% of cases linked to persistent infection with certain high-risk strains of HPV. In 2022, there were 1.27 lakh cervical cancer cases and 79,979 deaths in India, according to the data from the World Health Organization’s Global Cancer Observatory. However, the good part is that HIV is one of the only vaccine-preventable cancers.