A brand new gene test can help early-stage breast cancer patients skip chemotherapy, without lowering their chance of beating cancer.
A major study just tested this by gathering a group of women, then identifying them accurately based on whether or not their cancer would respond to hormone blocking drugs. These women would react so well to these drugs that adding chemo wouldn’t do much good, if any.
These women skipped chemo, and after five years, they had a less than one percent chance of cancer recurring in other places.
This is about as good of an outcome as anyone could hope, say study leader Dr. Joseph Sparano of the Montefiore Medical Center in New York and expert Dr. Clifford Hudis of New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
“There is really no chance that chemotherapy could make that number better,” said Hudis.
Early stage breast cancer, without spread to lymph-nodes, hormone positive, is the most common type of breast cancer. It effects over 100,000 women in the United States alone every year.
Usually, the treatment is surgery and hormone-blocking drugs. However, before this study, chemo was usually recommended, just to make sure that all cancer cells were killed.
But now, this gene test can see which genes control cell growh, and see whether or not they’re in a high-risk or low-risk group. Now, low-risk groups can safely assume they don’t need chemo in addition to their hormone therapy.
Experts believe women will be thrilled to learn they don’t need to have chemotherapy, and they say that giving less means that it “lets us focus our chemotherapy more on the higher risk patients who do benefit.”
