Breast cancer survival rates boost
Using chemotherapy and the drug Herceptin to treat early-stage breast cancer for women with an aggressive form of the disease could help boost survival rates, a study has found.
The research also found that the survival rate for patients given chemotherapy drug Adriamycin was similar to the survival rate for patients whose drug regime did not include that drug.
Dennis Slamon, of the University of California, Los Angeles, lead author of the study, said this suggested that Adriamycin, a type of drug called an anthracycline, was not necessary to treat the disease at all. Combining Adriamycin and Herceptin has been shown to cause permanent heart damage.
The study showed that those who took a combination of Adriamycin, Herceptin and chemotherapy drugs Carboplatin and Taxotere had a five-year survival rate of 92%, while 91% of those who took Herceptin, Carboplatin and Taxotere, but no Adriamycin, were still alive after five years.
Read the whole article at ecancermedicalscience
Reference
- Slamon, D., Eiermann, W., et al. (2011). Adjuvant trastuzumab in HER2-positive breast cancer New England Journal of Medicine DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa0910383
Keywords: HER2-positive breast cancer, trastuzumab
11. 10. 2011 ecancer.org
