September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness month. Advocates and researchers at the University of Michigan hope that increased awareness about ovarian cancer can save lives.

Here is what they want you to know.

1. Symptoms do exist. Bloating, pelvic or abdominal pain, difficulty eating, feeling full quickly, and frequent or urgent urinating are have been shown to be related to a possible case of ovarian cancer and if they persist you should see your doctor.
2. There is no early detection screening test currently.
3. All women should get yearly pelvic exams.
4. Ovarian cancer is difficult to treat because it's often resistant to current treatments.
5. Survival rates are better at the early stage.
6. Most common in older white women.
7. A small number of ovarian cancers are hereditary, linked to the same genes that are linked to breast cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2.
8. The best person to treat ovarian cancer is a gynecologic oncologist.

Wouldn't it be great if we could receive full-body scans every year to check for early signs of cancer and other disease? Even if possible and affordable -- right now, scans cost about $900 -- it still wouldn't be such a great idea.

Full-body scans often result in false alarms. People with harmless abnormalities may end up facing more tests, more risks, and more worry in order to rule out illness. The scan itself can present health hazards too. It exposes patients to more radiation than a chest X-ray and could slightly increase the risk of cancer, especially for those scanned every year.

How do we know, then, if something has gone awry in our bodies? Well, we can do our self-exams -- breast exams, testicular exams, skin exams -- and we can report for annual check-ups. We can respond to symptoms we experience -- if headaches are bothersome and persistent, your doctor may prescribe a head scan -- and we can pursue tests and screening that we really need for cancer prevention and early detection. Here are just a few:

Author Leah Hager Cohen says her blog is inspired by her mother, for at least two reasons. One: it is because of her mom that she's a writer. "She has seen me for a writer my whole life, ever since I could make up stories and dictate them to her," says Cohen. Two: her mom is fighting ovarian cancer, has been since April 2006 when she was 62. Cohen's blog -- Love As a Found Object -- is for her mom and about her mom. It is quite a blog.

In an entry written in September 2006, Cohen shares:

My mother is perhaps the most energetic person I know, and my children, who collectively run a close second, have grown accustomed to having her set the pace when she is around. She's the one who persuaded me, six years ago, that the kids and I did not need a dining room nearly so much as we needed a "project room." She usually arrives for visits bearing the raw materials and mental blueprint for some art or engineering project into which she and the kids then plunge together. Even though we've all had months to get used to her cancer, her tiredness still seems strange, as does the chemo-haze from which she regards us more quietly than is her wont. She seems almost an imposter in this muffled state, so accustomed are we to having her lead us on capers and jaunts through real and metaphorical woods.

Women with malignant ovarian germ cell tumors who undergo surgery intended to preserve fertility, in addition to platinum-based chemotherapy, are likely to maintain fertility, says a new study from MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Malignant ovarian germ cell tumors occur in the eggs of the ovary and tend to affect young women.

71 out of the 132 patients in the study underwent the procedure and reported still having menstrual periods and 37 children had been born to 24 of the women after their cancer treatment. Compared to the controls, the cancer survivors had higher reproductive concerns, less sexual pleasure. However they scored higher in terms of relationships with significant others, either within marriage or outside of marriage.

Dr. David M. Gershenson said that only half the patients had the fertility-sparing surgery, which "is much too low and reflects the fact that many of the patients underwent primary surgery by non-subspecialists who performed unnecessary sterilizing surgery in many cases."

Ovarian cancer has the highest death rate of any cancer tied to the human female reproductive system, so when news of a possible leap forward in treatment comes about, many millions of people listen up.

In the latest news, an experimental vaccine has been found to assist in treating (but not preventing) epithelial ovarian cancer. This is the most common type of ovarian cancer.

An ovarian cancer vaccine would be the preferred way to treat this deadly condition, which is generally found too late into its progression to make it a non-deadly cancer type. Based on this fact, a strong treatment has been hailed as what is needed. Perhaps that day is close at hand.

Those of us following cancer news wait with baited breath for news of cures and treatments with promising results. So it's always a bit of a disappointment when it's bad news, like this: New Zealand researches and determined that the clinical trails on an Ovarian Cancer Drug called DMXAA have not demonstrated any positive results.

The premise behind the drug was that it could kill cancer by reducing the blood supply to tumors, and it was given to Ovarian Cancer patients, along with Chemotherapy, to see if it would make a difference in recovery. Unfortunately, it didn't, and research on Ovarian cancer will be put on the backburner to make way for Lung Cancer trials at Novartis in New Zealand.

An interesting article came out this week at the San Diego Union-Tribune by Cheryl Clark discussing the new advisory regarding ovarian cancer symptoms. This advisory was issued in June from the Gynecologic Cancer Foundation, the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists and the American Cancer Society. The advisory lists four symptoms as possible signs of ovarian cancer: bloating, pelvic or abdominal pain, frequent or difficult urination, and feeling full quickly or having difficulty eating.

Clark addresses physician reaction to this advisory, which is varied. Some doctors believe that the symptoms are vague and usually harmless and this advisory may cause overtesting or unnecessary anxiety. For example, Dr. Philip Young of Vista, CA said, "This isn't going to save any lives because the symptoms are far too vague." In addition, he and other physicians in the article note that even if these symptoms are reported, the disease is probably in an advanced stage at that point anyway.

Dr. Barbara Goff, a gynecologic oncologist at the University of Washington, who helped write the advisory, disagrees.

Endometriosis increases the risk of certain cancers according to a recent analysis by Dr Anna-Sofia Melin at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. About 63,000 women who had been given a diagnosis of endometriosis between 1969 and 2002 were identified. In endometriosis, cells that usually only grow within the uterus grow outside the uterus.

The researchers found that endometriosis increased the risk of developing ovarian cancer by more than a third above the risk for women who did not have endometriosis (37%). There were similar increases in risk for endocrine tumours (38%), kidney cancer (36%) and thyroid cancer (33%). Slightly lower increases were found for brain tumours (27%) and malignant melanoma (23%), and there was a small increased risk of breast cancer (8%). In contrast, women with endometriosis had a reduced risk of cervical cancer of just under a third (29%).

However, there was no difference found between the risk of cancer in women with endometriosis who had borne children versus those who had not.

Dr. Melin cautions that it is too early to use the results of this study to give advice to doctors, but she stated, "Our hope is that doctors in general start to view the endometriosis disease as a serious disease that causes a lot of suffering to the patient and also may lead to cancer. We hope that in the future we will be able to identify those women with endometriosis that may have a more aggressive form of disease with more atypical cells, for instance, and that this may lead to better care for the patient and, hopefully, to a early diagnosis if cancer should occur."

Femara (letrozole) provides both anticancer responses and disease stabilization in a significant number of patients with recurrent, estrogen receptor positive ovarian cancer. The results of the study were published in Clinical Cancer Research.

Femara blocks levels of estrogen in the body, ultimately reducing or preventing growth of estrogen positive cancer cells. Femara has been demonstrated to be effective for estrogen positive breast cancer, but has not yet had a clear influence in women with ovarian cancer.

Forty two patients were part of a clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness of Femara. At three months, 42 percent of patients achieved disease stabilization and 9 percent achieved a regression of their disease. At over six months, 26 percent of patients still did not have progression of their disease measured by CA125 levels in the blood.

The researchers concluded that Femara may provide an effective and well tolerated treatment alternative for patients with recurrent, estrogen positive ovarian cancer.

High-profile television and newspaper gosspip columnist Claudia Cohen, most recently a regular correspondent covering entertainment for the syndicated talk show Live With Regis and Kelly, died Friday of ovarian cancer. She was 56.

Known for her aggressive pursuit of celebrity news and her public divorce from billionaire businessman Ronald O. Perelman, Cohen first hit the spotlight in the late 1970s as a reporter and editor for Page Six of The New York Post. She went on to write a gossip column titled I, Claudia for The Daily News of New York, report for Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, and dish celebrity dirt for ABC's The Morning Show.

Cohen is survived by her parents, a brother, and a daughter.

Can ovarian cancer be identified by certain symptoms? That is the finding of cancer experts this week who announced that possibly insignificant events and signs can turn out to be real-life indicators of ovarian cancer. And, the identification of these relatively light (benign) signs can, however, save lives according the report.

Signs such as bloating, abdominal pain and even eating difficulties are among the signs that one may have ovarian cancer.

Although these signs are not really significant in many circles, they can all be significant indicators when recognized as such. In fact, all these signs -- if they persist daily for a few weeks -- should be investigated by your doctor or oncologist.

Ovarian cancer is hard to detect and is usually found in the advanced stages. It is the most deadly of all gynecological cancers. Transvaginal sonography (TVS) screening has been associated with detecting ovarian cancer at earlier stages of the disease.

TVS is a procedure used to examine the vagina, uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, and bladder. An instrument is inserted into the vagina that causes sound waves to bounce off organs inside the pelvis. These sound waves create echoes that are sent to a computer, which creates a picture called a sonogram. The test is also known as a transvaginal ultrasound.

The researchers' findings appear in the May issue of Cancer. In the study, colleagues assessed the value of annual TVS screenings in over 25,000 women. Participants had to be at least 50 years of age with no cancer symptoms or at least 25 years of age with a family history of ovarian cancer.

Situated almost right next to each other in Boston, helping the lives of so many who need it, are the Joslin Diabetes Center and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Patients from around the globe visit this particular area of Beantown, receiving some of the best treatment available for their respective illness. Now, scientists have found that there is much more of a connection between diabetes and cancer than the zip code of these research centers.

Plans are already being drawn up for initial human trials for the use of a diabetes drug that has been shown to dramatically increase the efficacy of platinum-based chemotherapy. Researchers from Dana-Farber found that when the diabetes drug Rosizitaglone (more popularly known by its brand name of Avandia) was administered in conjunction with a platinum chemotherapy agent, the synergistic result was three times as effective at shrinking tumors (in mice) than the platinum chemotherapy agent alone.

Researchers hope that the use of this treatment could improve control of ovarian, lung and other cancers that are typically treated with platinum chemotherapy, particularly since these types of cancer can become resistant to the chemotherapy alone over time. In addition, they are examining whether the use of Rosizitaglone - which itself was designed to enhance the sensitivity of insulin receptors in people with type 2 diabetes - could also be used for treating types of cancer that platinum chemotherapy alone had not previously been shown to be effective.

Ovarian cancer clinical trial to test the drug Phenoxodiol was a post I did back in November of 2006.

Its back in the news again saying that so far the studies have shown Phenoxodiol to have an excellent safety profile, with few patients experiencing side effects.

New studies are also being done to help explain the mechanism by which Phenoxodiol induces cancer cell death. This drug interacts with a tumor specific protein and blocks cancerous cells from dividing, causing it to die.

Phenoxodiol also has showed some promise of restoring drug sensitivity in patients that have become resistant to treatment. The OVATURE trial that was discussed in my November post should have results out within 18 months.

Many cases of ovarian cancer are diagnosed at advanced stages, its one of the gynecological cancers that is hard to diagnose in the early stages of the disease. Ovarian cancer needs to be treated correctly from the get -go for the best chance of survival.

It seems that some women are not receiving appropriate surgery in the United States based on an article in Journal Watch by Andrew M. Kaunitz MD.

A study found that out of 10,000 women diagnosed with ovarian cancer from 1999 to 2002, only forty two percent underwent surgery at teaching hospitals. Almost half of the patients in the study were operated on by surgeons who performed fewer than 10 ovarian cancer surgeries each year. Scarier yet, the study showed that about 25 percent of these women underwent surgery by very-low-volume surgeons -- less than one annually.

Dr. Kaunitz advice is to seek out a gynecological oncologist to get comprehensive care that is needed.

Don't be afraid to ask a surgeon -- How many times have you performed this surgery?