Recently, a study published in the online edition of Obstetrics & Gynecology demonstrated the effectiveness of OVA 1 blood test. According to the guidelines of American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG), OVA1 blood test can better detect whether the ovarian mass is cancerous compared to the currently recommended CA 125 blood test.
OVA1 is the first test cleared by the US Food and Drug administration (FDA) to help check whether a woman’s ovarian mass is carcinogenic or not prior to surgery. While the test has been developed by Vermillion (VRML), leading diagnostics player, Quest Diagnostics (DGX), offers it in the US and India.
The study was conducted with 516 women scheduled for surgery for an ovarian mass. It was observed that the use of OVA1 could detect 94% of malignancies in women compared to 77% with CA 125. Moreover, in case of premenopausal women, OVA1 could accurately detect 91% of women with ovarian cancer compared to 58% with CA 125.
This test would be of immense benefit to the huge patient population as ovarian cancer is the fifth-leading cause of cancer deaths in women in the US. Moreover, according to estimates, ovarian masses affect an estimated one million women and lead to as many 300,000 ovarian mass surgeries in the US each year.
Quest Diagnostics is focusing on areas with high potential such as gene-based, esoteric and anatomic pathology testing, which accounted for approximately 36% of the company’s total revenue in 2010. The increase in esoteric testing was primarily driven by double digit growth in Vitamin D testing, which is being increasingly used for a range of conditions such as osteoporosis, cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Moreover, revenues derived from testing for blood cancers, particularly the Leumeta family of blood tests, recorded robust growth. The company’s portfolio was strengthened further with the US launch of AccuType IL28B test (in April 2011) for facilitating the prediction of patient response to peginterferon alpha-based therapy for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection.
Moreover, in March 2011, Quest received approval for its ColoVantage test from New York State's Department of Health for testing samples of patients. The recent favorable study related to the OVA1 test should further boost revenues in this segment.
We are currently ‘Neutral’ on Quest.
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