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Symptoms of ovarian cancer may be incorrectly diagnosed as signs of depression, a new study has found.
There are around 7,000 cases of the disease in the UK every year and 4,000 deaths, making it one of the most aggressive and deadliest forms of cancer. Around one woman dies every two hours in Britain as a result.
When ovarian cancer is diagnosed at the earliest stage, around 95 per cent of women will survive for more than five years.
But it is notoriously hard to catch early because symptoms are often dismissed as being linked to irritable bowel syndrome, stress, menopause, ageing and depression.
Now, researchers from the University of Iowa have added to that belief, uncovering that women with ovarian cancer – around a third of whom are diagnosed with depression – may be being overdiagnosed with the mental health condition.
The study, published in the journal Cancer, found that women with ovarian cancer often experienced physical symptoms caused by the disease even when they showed limited other signs of depression.
These included fatigue, loss of appetite and difficulty concentrating – symptoms associated with the mental health condition but are also common effects of ovarian cancer and its treatment.
Experts believe this may mean some women receive treatment for depression when the physical effects of their cancer require greater attention – potentially putting them at risk.
Symptoms of ovarian cancer may be overdiagnosed as depression, a new study has found
Lora Thompson, clinical psychologist in behavioral medicine at Moffitt Cancer Centre in Florida, who was not involved in the study, said: ‘Because a number of symptoms of depression… are also symptoms of cancer or cancer treatment, it can be difficult, even for health or mental health providers, to separate physical symptoms related to cancer.
‘It’s important to take a whole-person approach to care so that we can address both physical and emotional well-being in all cancer patients.’
The research team studied 428 women with ovarian cancer to see whether symptoms caused by the disease were making them appear more depressed than they really were.
They found that, near the time of diagnosis, women with the cancer were likely to report physical symptoms linked to depression such as low energy and poor appetite, even when they had relatively low levels of depression.
However, these symptoms mostly disappeared a year later, the study’s lead author Rachel Telles told Medscape Medical News.
The findings suggest that the physical symptoms caused by ovarian cancer may increase the appearance of depression.
In turn, this can lead doctors to overdiagnose when the symptoms would have disappeared with time.
Authors wrote: ‘These findings support the conclusion that somatic (physical) symptoms may disproportionately inflate depression scores among patients with ovarian cancer at diagnosis, which may potentially lead to misclassification or overestimation of depression severity.
‘This highlights the need for refined measurement approaches that account for the somatic burden of cancer in assessing depression during active disease.’
They recommended that the physical impacts of ovarian cancer should be considered when diagnosing patients with depression.
