High Blood Calcium Levels May Indicate Ovarian Cancer, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center Study

A new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center is the first to report that high blood calcium levels might predict of ovarian cancer, the most fatal of the gynecologic cancers. Lead author Gary G. Schwartz, Ph.D., a cancer epidemiologist at Wake Forest Baptist, and colleague, Halcyon G. Skinner, Ph.D., of the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center, examined associations between blood calcium and ovarian cancer in two national population-based groups. They found that women who were later diagnosed with ovarian cancer and women who later died of ovarian cancer had higher levels of calcium in blood than women who did not before their cancer diagnosis.