Studies indicate that breast cancer patients with moderate risk of recurrence were meaningless after receiving chemotherapy

byKevin Morris

Chemotherapy may be given to patients with breast cancer with a possibility of recurrence, but it has not been clarified until now that "Does this chemotherapy have actual effects?" According to a study conducted on 10,000 newly made cancer patients, "the risk of recurrence does not change even for breast cancer patients with moderate risk of recurrence, whether they are receiving chemotherapy or not" It became clear.

Adjuvant Chemotherapy Guided by a 21-Gene Expression Assay in Breast Cancer | NEJM
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1804710

Doctors hail world first as woman's advanced breast cancer is eradicated | Science | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jun/04/doctors-hail-world-first-as-womans-advanced-breast-cancer-is-eradicated

Many Women with Breast Cancer Do not Need Chemotherapy
https://www.livescience.com/62737-breast-cancer-chemotherapy.html

This research included in the project called "Trial Assigning IndividuaLed Options for Treatment (Rx) / clinical trial specifying individualized selection therapy (TAILORx)" started in 2016 with the investment of the National Cancer Institute The tumor of 10,000 women who are subjects was analyzed by molecular diagnosis. All subjects were all hormone receptor (HR) positive,HER 2Negative, axillary lymph node metastasis negative early stage breast cancer patients, it is a common type of breast cancer. In the diagnosis, 21 kinds of genes are analyzed and the risk of breast cancer recurrence is evaluated with a score of 0 to 100.

This researchAmerican National Cancer InstituteIs included in the project called "Trial Assigning IndividuaLedded Options for Treatment (Rx) / clinical trial specifying individualized selection therapy (TAILORx)" started in 2016 and the tumor of 10,000 female subjects Was analyzed by molecular diagnosis. In the diagnosis, 21 types of genes were analyzed, and the risk of breast cancer recurrence was evaluated with a score of 0 to 100.

byPablo Heimplatz

At this time, the researchers especially focused on the group whose score was 11 to 25 and whose recurrence risk was evaluated as moderate. Normally, a group with a score of 10 or less is judged to have a low probability of recurrence, chemotherapy is not required, and only hormone therapy is performed. In addition to hormonal therapy, chemotherapy is performed on cancer patients whose score is 26 or more.

Among the 10,000 subjects of TAILORx, the recurrence risk was considered to be moderate at 6,700 people. The researchers randomly divided the 6,700 women into two groups, one group received hormone therapy only after surgery and the other group received both hormone therapy and chemotherapy.

Five years after treatment, the proportion of patients who received only hormonal therapy was 92.8% who did not recurrence cancer, whereas in patients receiving both hormone therapy and chemotherapy it was 93.1%, with little difference It was found that there was nothing. In addition, the nonrecurrence rate at the time of nine years passed since treatment was also 83.3% for the former and 84.3% for the latter, and it seems that there was little statistical difference.

Jeffrey Abrams, a clinical researcher at the National Cancer Institute who conducted the research, said, "Even though we are at high or low risk of recurrence, we have recommended treatment, but the risk of recurrence It is unclear what kind of treatment is appropriate for moderate patients "" "We received both chemotherapy and hormonal therapy for many patients with moderate risk "The results of the study that there is no merit in making it" is considered to be of great use in decision making of oncologists and patients themselves. "

byKlaus Hausmann

However, researchers are calling attention to the fact that subjects in this study were limited to women under 50 years old and women with a moderate risk of recurrence.