Swedes using testing to treat breast cancer patients without chemotherapy : wifr

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Swedes using testing to treat breast cancer patients without chemotherapy

Swedes using testing to treat breast cancer patients without chemotherapy

ROCKFORD, Ill. (WIFR) -- A new study is now helping some breast cancer patients avoid chemotherapy, and local doctors are using the research to keep their patients away from the side effects, when it's safe.Following usual treatments like surgery, hormonal therapy and radiation, doctors use a test called "MammaPrint" to manipulate 70 genes in the body to determine if a patient is low or high risk.The doctors who performed the study say they found nearly half of the women with early stages of breast cancer, stage 1 and 2, may be able to avoid chemo with a small risk of the cancer coming back or spreading.The study says that if a patient has a low genomic risk they can go without chemo, while still having similar results.


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Some breast cancer patients with low genetic risk could skip chemotherapy, study finds

Some breast cancer patients with low genetic risk could skip chemotherapy, study finds

Credit: University of California, San Francisco Early-stage breast cancer patients whose tumors carry genetic markers associated with a low risk of disease recurrence may not need to undergo chemotherapy, suggests a new study that employed a test devised by a UC San Francisco researcher.In the study, reported Aug. 24, 2016, in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers profiled surgically removed tumors from nearly 6,700 patients using a genetic test known as MammaPrint, which predicts the risk of cancer recurrence by measuring the expression of a suite of 70 genes.They found that early-stage breast cancer patients with high "clinical risk" – as determined by conventional measures such as tumor size, the presence of hormone receptors, and metastasis to lymph nodes – but low genetic risk, according to MammaPrint results, had very similar prognoses whether they underwent chemotherapy or not.After five years, nearly 95 percent of patients with high clinical risk, but low genetic risk, who did not receive chemotherapy were still alive and without metastatic disease distant from the site of their primary cancer, a survival rate only 1.5 percent lower than in women with the same characteristics who did receive chemotherapy.


in like manner upi

Some breast cancer patients could skip chemotherapy, study says

Some breast cancer patients could skip chemotherapy, study says

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Some patients can be spared exposure to chemotherapy during breast cancer treatment based on genetic tests of their tumors, according to a recent study.Breast cancer patients whose tumors have low genetic risk for cancer recurrence and did not receive chemotherapy survived at rates about as high as similar patients who were treated with the drugs, report researchers at the University of California San Francisco in a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.Doctors generally judge how to treat cancer using conventional measures such as tumor size, presence of hormone receptors and metastasis.This clinical risk guides the decisions of doctors and patients, however the genetic test, called MammaPrint, predicts the risk for breast cancer to recur by measuring a group of 70 genes.