A BLOOD screening test has been developed to detect ovarian cancer, a disease known as the silent killer because it is so difficult to identify.

The test for the cancer, which affects one woman in seventy and kills three quarters of sufferers, spots raised levels of proteins associated with the disease.

Researchers in the United States who have developed the test say that it has the potential to save lives by allowing identification at a stage when the cancer can be effectively treated.

The new test was developed by a team of scientists led by Gil Mor, from the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. The findings are reported today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The test relies on four marker proteins, whittled down from an initial list of 169. The four — leptin, prolactin, osteopontin and the insulin-like growth factor II — identified cancer with 95 per cent accuracy in a test group of more than 200 women. The rate is still not precise enough to be used in national screening programmes.

Ovarian cancer is difficult to detect because the ovaries are buried deep in the pelvis — unlike a breast lump, there is often nothing to feel until the tumour has expanded into the abdomen. Some women may experience slight symptoms — abdominal distension, bloating or vaginal bleeding — but these are often put down to other common conditions such as constipation, indigestion or irritable bowel syndrome.

After breast, bowel and lung cancer, ovarian cancer is the most common form of the disease and accounts for 5 to 6 per cent of all cancer deaths in women. Treatment involves surgery to remove as much of the cancer as possible, then chemotherapy. Improvements in surgical techniques and chemotherapy drugs mean that the median life expectancy has risen from less than 12 months after diagnosis 20 years ago to more than three years today.

Dr Mor said that the new test had the potential to save many lives by offering the chance of early intervention. Almost 4,700 of the 7,000 women who have the cancer diagnosed in Britain every year do not survive.

Each of the proteins had previously been suggested as a possible cancer biomarker. In the study, however, no protein on its own could completely distinguish cancer patients from healthy participants.

The researchers have pointed out that the test would have to be improved before it was good enough for national screening, which required an accuracy of at least 99.6 per cent.

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