Cure For Breast Cancer On Its Way?
Three recently released studies in the US and the UK show that the drug Herceptin boosts the chances of disease-free survival by 52% in women diagnosed with a certain type of breast cancer.
Breast cancer currently kills about 40,000 of the 200,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer each year. About 25% of those diagnosed with breast cancer have HER2-positive breast cancer, the type that appears to be successfully treatable with Herceptin.
This is especially encouraging because HER2-positive breast cancer is very aggressive, with an average survival time less than half that of women with other types of breast cancer.
This is not a new drug - it's been approved for treatment of advanced breast cancer since 1998. What is new is that it is now being tested on women with early-stage cancer, with very positive results.
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The challenge is that this procedure still has to undergo additional testing and approval processes. Part of the issue here is that cancer survival rates are normally measured after 5 years - meaning that large-scale tests have to be conducted for at least 5 years to truly determine effectiveness.
Tough decision for the FDA - do they approve it early, taking the risk that other problems will arise later in the drug's life (currently 4% of women taking this drug develop symptoms of congestive heart failure and there could be more risks with long-term use), or do they wait?
Not enough testing has been done so far to judge the long-term effects of Herceptin, but it looks encouraging! Let's hope this one works!
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