New hope in fight against the cancer that killed TV Jade

A scientific discovery about where and how cervical cancer takes root in the body has resolved a decades-long mystery and could lead to even better prevention, claim experts.

Nearly 530,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer annually worldwide and 275,000 die from the disease

The disease that claimed the life of 27-year-old TV reality star Jade Goody in Britain, kills 275,000 women worldwide every year.

But now doctors have identified a peculiar population of stem-like cells in a part of the cervix that when infected by human papillomavirus are responsible for most cases of cervical cancer. Apparently as early as the 1920s, doctors in Boston, Massachusetts discovered a related phenomenon that arose from a common practice of cauterising the cervix or burning off any abnormal cells, after childbirth.

Back then, they noted that women who underwent the pro­cedure almost never developed cervical cancer but they were not sure why.

Now, doctors believe it was because they were burning off a population of host cells which cannot regenerate.

And the finding has made some consider whether the technique should be revived to help in parts of the developing world where cervical cancer remains a widespread killer of women.

Nearly 530,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer annually worldwide and 275,000 die from the disease, according to the World Health Organisation.

Jade Goody’s much publicised fight against the disease and her filmed death resulted in a surge of women having screening tests.

“It has been the experience of many obstetricians who meticulously restore all cervices to a normal condition by cauterisation that cervical cancer is extremely rare among their patients,” US doctor Paul Younge wrote in the November 1957 edition of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

In the article, Dr Younge recalled learning of the technique from a colleague who “began routine postpartum cauterisation of the cervix over 30 years ago.”

He told him shortly before dying that he had performed the procedure on more than 6,000 women.

Dr Younge said only one of those patients in the Boston area had ever developed a cervical lesion, and urged all physicians to routinely cauterise the cervix after childbirth in case abnormalities were observed.

Dr Younge and his colleague, Albert Kevorkian, performed the procedure for years until they retired from the Free Hospital, which has now become known as Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said Ralph Richart, who worked with them in 1960.

The technique involved peering at the cervix with a microscope-like instrument and delivering an electrical current through a medical wand to burn off the cells.

Years later, Prof. Richart told Christopher Crum, who was working under him as a fellow at Columbia University, about the Boston doctors’ findings and the hints they left towards a potential preventive technique against cervical cancer.

Now Mr Crum, who worked with colleagues in Harvard Medical School and the Agency for Science Technology and Research in Singapore on the latest study, finally has some evidence for the phenomenon.

The cells where cancer takes root are usually located near the opening of the cervix, in a transition area between the vagina and uterus.

The findings could benefit places like south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where women may not have the opportunity for regular screenings or vaccines to prevent cervical cancer, but may undergo a brief cryo-probe procedure that would freeze off the cells, Mr Crum said.