Researchers at Wits University have successfully enhanced the effectiveness of heat therapy to help treat cervical cancer. With 10,702 new cases diagnosed and 5,870 deaths annually in South Africa, cervical cancer remains the second most common cancer among women in the country. The research team at Wits University began testing mEHT for cervical cancer treatment in 2014.
Dr. Carrie Anne Minnaar, who led the study at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre University, says “The high incidence and advanced stage of cervical cancer in South Africa, especially in the public healthcare setting, and the limited resources for treatment, compounded by the HIV incidence, means that we desperately need a way to improve the outcomes, without adding additional burden on the system, or additional costs and without increasing the treatment toxicity. mEHT has potential to achieve this, so we developed a trial to test and confirm this.
” They explored the addition of Modulated Electro-Hyperthermia (mEHT) to standard treatment protocols for locally advanced cervical cancer and monitored participants for five years post-treatment. This decade-long study is groundbreaking as it is the first phase III trial on mEHT, the first hyperthermia trial conducted in Africa, and the first to include HIV-positive participants. The recently announced results are promising.
Dr. Minnaar says; “We have had positive results for certain tumour types in our practice. But the best evidence is the 10-year trial.