Thursday, May 5, 2011

The Breast Cancer News Daily Update: May 6

It's Friday. Today we'll cover the morning breast cancer news and highlight the noteworthy abstracts from medical research publications we added to our database this week.

First the news.

This morning, The Telegraph (UK) reported that tamoxifen only reduces risk of breast cancer in about half of the women who take it for breast cancer prevention.

The screening mammography discussion continued today with a Reuters story about the impact of the US Preventative Services Task force recommendation against mammograms for women in their 40s on minority women. According to the report, "minority women are more likely to develop breast cancer in their forties than white women."

In prognostic testing, Irish and American researchers compared the OncotypeDX test to the PAM50 test. According to the story in Medical News Today, the tests predicted similar risk for those with high and low risk. For those with intermediate risk, the PAM50 identified more patients who would not benefit from chemotherapy.

Also in prognostic testing, French researchers reported that baseline circulating tumor cell (CTC) counts are prognostic at baseline for metastatic patients, and that CTC changes during treatment, "may be an early indicator of chemotherapy efficiency."

This week, we added a few interesting abstracts from breast cancer research medical publications to our database.

Researchers in Chicago reviewed hospital and emergency room admission records to see which 5-HT(3) RA class drugs for chemotherapy-related nausea and vomiting were most effective. They concluded that breast cancer patients on cyclophosphamide-based chemotherapy had "a significantly lower risk" of hospital-related nausea and vomiting if they started and continued taking palonosetron (brand name Aloxi).

The Annals of Plastic Surgery published a study that found "nearly 1 in 5" healthy breasts removed during a contralateral prophylactic mastectomy contained a malignant or pre-malignant lesion. Risk factors for finding a malignancy in a healthy breast included "a lobular histology in the original specimen" and patient age over 54.

In the UK, a study in The British Journal of Cancer found clinical benefit in continuing trastuzumab (brand name Herceptin) beyond disease progression in patients with locally advanced or metastatic HER2 positive disease.

Please check back Sunday evening for a recap of the weekend breast cancer news. As always, at LATESTBreastCancer.com we welcome any and all feedback. We want to know what interests you most.

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