Seven women die each day from womb cancer, and cases are on the rise. Over the last 20 years, the number of women diagnosed with womb cancer has risen more than 50%. Also known as endometrial or uterine cancer, it’s the fourth most-common cancer in women in the UK.

Prediction, prevention, and cures

Womb cancer is most common in women after menopause but can affect any woman at any stage of life. Many women are cured by having what’s known as a hysterectomy, where the entire womb is removed in surgery. But surgery alone won't work if the cancer has spread beyond the womb, which is often the case, and instead needs to be combined with other treatments.

Even if surgery goes perfectly, womb-removal is a major operation that can be gruelling on body and mind, despite surgery’s success.

We also know that certain lifestyle factors, like smoking, can lead to certain cancers, for example lung cancer. When people are aware of the link between smoking and cancer, it can help them make decisions about their health and lifestyle. But until recently there have been no tried and tested ways of knowing which things (like smoking, or certain medications, or BMI) matter when it comes to womb cancer.

Thinking big

Wellbeing of Women researcher and NIHR Clinical Lecturer Dr Sarah Kitson is thinking big to help women at risk of womb cancer. She teamed up with the UK Biobank – an ongoing collection of health information of half a million people in the UK – to see if she could predict a woman’s risk of womb cancer.

Using the Biobank, Dr Kitson analysed the genetic and health information of over 220,000 women. Her aim was to see how things like smoking, family history, BMI, ethnicity, reproductive health history, economic background, and certain medications or lifestyle, played out in relation to womb cancer.

The UK Biobank is an evolving resource, with roughly 500,000 people providing new information about their health over time. Dr Kitson included over 200,000 of these in her study and, because the data spans more than a decade, Dr Kitson was able to examine the relationship between a woman’s health history and womb cancer.

By linking the health information and outcomes, and crunching some serious numbers, Dr Kitson has created a way to identify which women are more likely to get womb cancer in the next 10 years.

Prediction is always a guessing game, and there are no certainties. But being able to make an educated guess is a huge help – and often denied to women due to a lack of good research on conditions that affect them.

Out of the lab and into the clinic

If used widely by GPs, as Dr Kitson hopes, this new tool could cut the number of women receiving late-stage – or even preventable - diagnoses by up to 60%, potentially saving thousands of lives.

But while research is done in a lab, medicine is a deeply human practice. A tool might be helpful in theory, but difficult to use in the clinic, which makes it less likely to work in reality. Additionally, receiving news that you’re at high risk of cancer could be life-changing, and delivering that news could have unintended negative effects on women.

To tackle this head on, Dr Kitson is now looking to see how this new tool might become a routine part of medical care.

The results so far are promising. GPs feel that the tool could be woven into practice and women are interested in both understanding their risk and taking action to reduce their risk.

So now that we know the potential impact, and that there is strong appetite for this tool, the next steps are clear: we need further research to trial it in the clinic.

A better future for women

The researchers are now testing further whether their findings apply to different countries and ethnic groups outside of the UK. This is crucial to ensure that all women, no matter where they live and what their backgrounds are, have the best chance at a long and fulfilling life.

Dr Kitson has begun to carve out a more hopeful future for thousands of women at risk of womb cancer, and Wellbeing of Women is proud to have supported her work in the process.

Dr Kitson said, “I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to use one of the largest medical databases in the world to improve the way we help women navigate their health at critical life stages. We know that having knowledge and choices are essential for women to feel in control of their health. I hope my research improves the range of options available to women, GPs and other healthcare providers, and leads to a reduction in preventable cases of womb cancer in the UK."

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