Fallopian tube as main source for ovarian and pelvic (non-endometrial) serous carcinomas.

Copyright: © 2012 Zheng W et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. In 2012, it is estimated that 22,280 new cases of ovarian carcinoma will be diagnosed in the United States, with 15500 associated deaths [1]. The high case fatality rate of ovarian cancers, most of which are high-grade serous adenocarcinomas, can be attributed to the advanced stage at which most patients with this disease present, and their attendant poor prognoses at this stage [2]. Attempts at screening and early detection of ovarian cancer, using a combination of transvaginal ultrasounds, measurements of serum CA-125 and other biomarkers, have largely been unsuccessful due to their lack of sufficient specificity and sensitivity in the general population [3-5]. Prophylactic oophorectomies, which surveys show are performed in a substantial portion of postmenopausal women [6-9], remain a subject of debate as a way a reducing the mortality of ovarian cancers. In any event, the failure of most current preventive methods is evidenced by the fact that the overall mortality for ovarian carcinoma has largely remained unchanged for several decades [10]. A logical approach to a seemingly intractable problem is to re-assess and question some fundamental assumptions, in this case the cell and organ of origin for “ovarian” or pelvic non-endometrial serous carcinomas. In this regard, the last decade has seen the emergence of a robust body of evidence that implicates the fallopian tube as the origin for most pelvic serous carcinomas that have traditionally been assumed to be of ovarian origin [11].