There are many people in the world affected by the deadly cancer disease. One of the most prevalent cancers, in women especially, is breast cancer. Breast cancer can affect anyone, whether you are a man or a woman, old or young.
Fighting cancer has never been easy, in the past there were only limited ways wherein the person affected by the disease can be treated. One of these treatments is chemotherapy, and chemotherapy is basically pumping poison in the body to kill the cancer cell. Even until now, chemotherapy is still an unlikely option given to patients.
Surgery is another option, if the cancer has not yet spread to other areas in the body, surgery is an option. In breast cancer, if early detected, a mastectomy is possible; it is a surgery wherein the breasts of cancer patients are removed. It aims to remove any cancer tissue in the breast area. But this doesn't mean that there will be no relapse of the cancer after surgery.
Now, a study confirms that a test called, Oncotype DX, worked very well when it was tested to a small group of patients. The Oncotype DX analyzes 21 genes in the tumor and estimates the degree of possibility for patients to have cancer relapse after surgery.
The patients who tested low risk, 99 percent did not develop metastatic breast cancer five years after they had their surgery, despite not undergoing chemotherapy. "This is really great news for the patients we're treating," Dr. Sharon Giordano, an oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said. Oncotype DX is recommended by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and is even considered as a standard of care for a type of breast cancer.
The researchers behind the Oncotype DX tested 10,000 women, who were diagnosed with some sort of breast cancer that responded to anti-hormone treatments. 16 percent of the women were at low risk, therefore there was no need for chemotherapy and only anti-hormone medications. But 70 percent of the patients had ambiguous results; they scored in the mid-range and considered to have moderate risk for relapse.
Dr. Daniel Hayes co-directs the Breast Oncology Program at the University of Michigan and contributed to the current study, along with his colleagues is still pursuing the research on the gene test. They are now testing to see which of the patients respond well to chemotherapy. The results of their trials are due in a few years.
