A ‘GAME-CHANGER’ blood test, capable of detecting womb cancer even at its pre-cancerous stage, is to go into clinical trial at Rosemere Cancer Centre.

Consultants there have already been involved in a Rosemere Cancer Foundation sponsored study that has helped to establish the test as an advancement in improving the diagnosis and prognosis of the disease, the incidence of which is rising in the UK through its links to increasing obesity and an ageing population.

Symptoms of womb cancer, the sixth most common cancer in women, can include post-menopausal bleeding.

Currently, testing for the disease is usually done firstly by transvaginal ultrasound to measure the thickness of the womb’s lining. It is a procedure that is intimate, expensive and limited by the scarcity of highly trained ultrasonographers.

Women with a thickened lining then undergo a biopsy either as an out-patient or in-patient. Of the UK women found to have womb cancer, the majority are diagnosed with stage 1 disease.

But 30 per cent have more advanced cancer and therefore a poorer prognosis.