Performance of the WID‐qEC test to detect uterine cancers in black women with abnormal uterine bleeding: A prospective observational cohort study in Ghana

2025

Detecting Uterine Cancers in Black Women with Abnormal Bleeding

Sample size: 106 publication 10 minutes Evidence: high

Author Information

Author(s): Sebastian Ken‐Amoah, Elisa Redl, Bright K. S. Domson, James E. Barrett, Lena Schreiberhuber, Chiara Herzog, Rupali Arora, Allison Jones, Iona Evans, Dan Reisel, Esther Lamptey‐Mills, Vincent B. Nachinab, Theodora Pepera, Adeola Olaitan, Dorcas Obiri‐Yeboah, Patrick K. Akakpo, Martin Widschwendter

Primary Institution: Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana

Hypothesis

Can the WID-qEC test effectively detect endometrial and cervical cancers in black women presenting with abnormal uterine bleeding?

Conclusion

The WID-qEC test accurately detects both endometrial and cervical cancers in black women presenting with abnormal uterine bleeding.

Supporting Evidence

The WID-qEC test identified 100% of endometrial and cervical cancers in the study population.
The sensitivity of the WID-qEC test for detecting endometrial cancer was 100%.
The specificity of the WID-qEC test was 76.1%.
Among 102 women, 23 were diagnosed with cancer, including 8 with endometrial cancer and 15 with cervical cancer.
The study was conducted at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital and its affiliated health facilities in Ghana.
Ultrasound was found to be an unreliable triage tool for detecting uterine cancers in this population.
The WID-qEC test is a low-cost, high-throughput PCR-based analysis.
The study followed the STROBE guidelines for cohort studies.

Takeaway

A new test called WID-qEC can find cancers in women who have unusual bleeding, helping doctors catch these cancers early.

Methodology

This was a prospective observational cohort study where cervicovaginal samples were collected from women aged ≥40 years with abnormal uterine bleeding for WID-qEC testing.