New Methods In The Study Of Breast Cancer.
An theoretical blood analysis could succour show whether women with advanced breast cancer are responding to treatment, a prefatory study suggests. The test detects peculiar DNA from tumor cells circulating in the blood. And the experimental findings, reported in the March 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, indication that it could outperform existing blood tests at gauging some women's reaction to treatment for metastatic heart of hearts cancer pillarder.com. That's an advanced form of breast cancer, where tumors have growth to other parts of the body - most often the bones, lungs, liver or brain.
There is no cure, but chemotherapy, hormonal cure or other treatments can disinclined disease progression and ease symptoms. The sooner doctors can direct whether the treatment is working, the better. That helps women escape the side effects of an ineffective therapy, and may empower them to switch to a better one.
Right now, doctors monitor metastatic boob cancer with the help of imaging tests, such as CT scans. They may also use indisputable blood tests - including one that detects tumor cells floating in the bloodstream, and one that measures a tumor "marker" called CA 15-3.
But imaging does not be sure the undamaged story, and it can risk women to significant doses of radiation. The blood tests also have limitations and are not routinely used. "Practically speaking, there's a prodigious difficulty for novel methods" of monitoring women, said Dr Yuan Yuan, an helpmeet professor of medical oncology at City of Hope cancer center in Duarte, Calif.
For the untrained study, researchers at the University of Cambridge in England took blood samples from 30 women being treated for metastatic bust cancer and having conventional imaging tests. They found that the tumor DNA evaluate performed better than either the CA 15-3 or the tumor room probe when it came to estimating the women's treatment response. Of 20 women the researchers were able to follow for more than 100 days, 19 showed cancer development on their CT scans.
And 17 of them had shown rising tumor DNA levels. In contrast, only seven had a rising or slue of tumor cells, while nine had an rise in CA 15-3 levels. For 10 of those 19 women, tumor DNA was on the take to the air an customary of five months before CT scans showed their cancer was progressing. "The take-home essence is that circulating tumor DNA is a better monitoring biomarker than the existing Food and Drug Administration-approved ones," said chief researcher Dr Carlos Caldas.
