Chemotherapy may provide no benefit for breast cancer in some cases

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJun 5 2018

Br Dr Ananya Mandal, MD

In a new study a team of researchers have found that chemotherapy can be completely skipped in early stage breast cancer patients provided certain genetic tests of the tumours are made to assess the risk.

Dr. Joseph Sparano of Montefiore Medical Center in New York, lead author of the study says that the impact of this test could spare thousands of women from chemotherapy and for them surgery and hormone therapy could be sufficient. The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute. The results were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago yesterday.

The study report is published in the journal New England Journal of Medicine.

For this study the researchers gave 10,273 patients a test called Oncotype DX where a biopsy sample tested the genetic makeup of their cancer and assess if they would respond well to chemotherapy or a combination of hormonal therapy and surgery. Results showed that 67 percent women were at an intermediate risk.

All of the participants underwent surgery and hormonal therapy and half of them got chemotherapy. Nine years after the treatment 94 percent of the women were alive and 84 percent were free from the cancer. This showed that the chemotherapy had no influence in the outcome of the cancer.

Oncotype DX costs around $4,000, which Medicare and many insurers cover say researchers and all women should undergo it.

Reference:

• https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1804710