Can Vinegar Reduce Cervical Cancer Deaths?

A household remedy and cooking staple, vinegar may also reduce cervical cancer deaths, researchers reported to MedPage Today.

In a randomized 12-year study of 150,000 women in India, the mortality rate of cervical cancer of those women who had been biennial visual inspections with vinegar was reduced by 31 percent, compared to women who received no screening, said Surendra Srinivas Shastri, MD, from the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, and colleagues at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting.

"We now have a method which could in a very simple way reduce cervical cancer mortality in low-resource countries like India," Shastri said.

He said cervical cancer is the leading cause of cancer death for women in India, with India accounting for 30 percent of all global cervical cancer deaths. Because the country does not have an adequate health care infrastructure, such as diagnostic laboratories and trained health care workers, Shastri said pap smearing isn't feasible.

While vinegar screening tests cost less than $1 per patient, Pap smears or HPV DNA tests cast about $15 per. The study was conducted from 1998 to 2002 with 12 years of follow-up, in which researchers randomly assigned 75,360 women middle-aged women (ages 35 to 64) with no prior history of cancer to biennial screening with vinegar, and 76,178 women to no screening at all. Most women in India do not receive any cervical screening.

The vinegar used in the study was not household vinegar, but a sterilized combination of acetic acid mixed with water. The solution was applied to the cervix by trained personnel. Shastri said that "cancerous and precancerous cells have more proteins in the nucleus than healthy cervical cells, and they aggregate into a whitish mass within a minute."

He said the study suggested that screening did not lead to over-diagnosis, as the instance of cervical cancer was similar between the two groups of women.

"Showing that a screening test reduces mortality is the gold standard, and that had not been done before. Now we have a large randomized trial in a low-resource country showing the vinegar test meets that standard," said Electra Paskett, PhD, of The Ohio State University in Columbus to MedPage Today. Paskett was the discussant for the study. "It could also be used in low-resource pockets in the U.S. that don't have access to or can't afford Pap smears or HPV DNA tests", she said, adding that Pap smears and vinegar screenings are comparable in accuracy.