New research 'may lead to better breast cancer treatment'

A new study in the US may lead to more effective treatments for breast cancer and reduce the number of women dying from the disease, it has been claimed.

Each year over one million people worldwide are diagnosed with the disease, 45,000 of whom live in the UK, but an article published in the Nature Medicine journal has shown that it may be possible to prescribe a more effective method of treatment to reduce the chances of the cancer returning after therapy.

According to the report, women who have adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer after surgery can lower their chances of having recurrence of metastatic cancer, a particularly aggressive form of the disease.

Currently, around 80 per cent of breast cancer sufferers in the UK live beyond five years, but experts claim the new study may be able to improve survival rates even further.

A spokeswoman for Against Breast Cancer, which funds research into battling the condition, said the method is not necessarily a new treatment, but may help to avoid women receiving ineffective therapy.

"This observation needs to be confirmed on a larger number of patients before bringing it to the clinic. If confirmed, [the] discovery seems an important step forward. The blunderbuss approach of using chemotherapy is over," she said.

The expert added that the government's financial restrictions often make it more difficult to prescribe effective treatment, but UK healthcare specialists are steadily making progress to further reduce the number of people dying from the disease.

Posted by Stephen Tate

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