Vinegar-Based Screening Effective in Preventing Cervical Cancer in Poor Countries

Ordinary vinegar along with visual screening can provide early diagnosis for cervical cancer in poor countries, a new study has found.

The study, conducted in Mumbai, India, showed that regular screening for cervical cancer by trained non-medical professionals reduced cervical cancer-related deaths by 31 percent. The study included 150,000 women in Mumbai's slums and was conducted over a period of 15 years.

Cervical cancer is usually detected by using a Pap test. In the U.S., regular Pap tests have lowered the incidence of cervical cancer by as much as 50 percent over the past 30 years. In a Pap test, cells from the cervix - the organ connecting the uterus and vagina - are scraped and analyzed under a microscope.

In countries where women have little or no access to Pap screening, the vinegar-based method could prevent 72,000 deaths related with cervical cancer.

In the test, a health care worker uses a swab to apply vinegar to a woman's cervix, which leads to the pre-cancerous tumors to turn white, if present. A bright light is used by the health care worker to inspect the cervix, reports The Telegraph.

"We hope our results will have a profound effect in reducing the burden of cervical cancer in India and around the world," said lead study author Surendra Srinivas Shastri, a professor of preventive oncology at Mumbai's Tata Memorial Hospital, reports The Telegraph."This is the first trial to identify a cervical cancer screening strategy that reduces mortality and is feasible to implement on a broad scale throughout India and in other developing countries."

The study findings were reported at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago.

The new screening method could also help women in the U.S., where about 40 percent of them don't undergo treatment following an abnormal Pap result.

In the U.S., an estimated 12,000 cases of cervical cancers will be detected in 2013, and about 4,000 women will die of this cancer, says The National Cancer Institute.

Doctors at the meeting said that the new vinegar-based test could be an alternative for the Pap test.

"What we're talking about is the use of vinegar in a large screening program where PAP testing is not available. There have been studies that have demonstrated that the accuracy of these programs is comparable," said Electra Paskett, an ASCO spokeswoman and an expert in gynecologic cancers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, reports Reuters Health.