Blood Test In Early Stage Breast Cancer May Predict Recurrence And Survival

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

The tumor cells (CTCs), circulating blood test for early stage breast cancer patients predicts recurrence and life chances and help determine which ones may need additional treatment, according to new research published on Wednesday could. However, the results are acceptable for clinical use of such a method must be confirmed by first major studies.
An early online issue of The Lancet Oncology write about their findings, researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center note, this is partly due to his research before, you already know that the blood CTCs is associated with a poor prognosis once breast cancer to other parts of the body (metastatic breast cancer) has spread.
Now their latest work, first of its kind and one of the largest, CTCs shows early stages of disease may be a similar predictive value.
Then, the tumor spread and surgical treatment for early stage breast cancer, and many patients have lymph nodes removed, chemotherapy and radiotherapy to remove all traces of the disease.
However, nearly two years later, the first author, Anthony Lucci, a professor at the Department of Surgical Oncology, MD Anderson in another part of the body around one-third of these patients will experience the return of cancer, the recurrence time for a summit he says.
Lucci told the press that "we wanted to understand why."
He found, "he said very early in cancer cells can break free of the primary tumor cells and may be dangerous, even this early stage cancers."
"Now, a reliable, no clinical evidence of circulating tumor cells to detect 25 percent of patients with metastatic breast cancer and circulatory risk of dying from recurrent or approximately four times higher than those without these cells know that," Lucci said.
Notes in your own background, the researchers in this metastatic breast cancer, the presence of CTCs and strong connections in higher numbers of early recurrence and poor survival with time to write more. And at the same time, these studies have shown that metastatic colorectal and prostate cancers.
This is true of early stage cancer is an ongoing push to explore. Currently, axillary lymph node dissection for women with early stage breast cancer to predict prognosis is good.
Lucci and his colleagues, the average age of the blood and bone samples of 54 302 breast cancer patients whose CTCs collected and stage I cancer, stage II and stage III. All patients were being treated at MD Anderson, and none of the samples had undergone chemotherapy before.
Within five years of their diagnosis of breast cancer had a cancer other than breast or cancer patients with more than one, were not included.
For this study, the researchers only blood CTCs, CTCs of data on non-bone marrow is used.
Therefore, when the closed curve to determine and measure Veridex a so-called cell search system is used. Hormone status (estrogen, progesterone, and HER2), and then the size and degree of lymph node involvement, tumor grade features, compared with the results.
They are 35 months, followed patients for a median period of progression-free and overall survival and CTC measurements and statistical tests were conducted to find any link between.
They found:

    Detection of one or more CTCs and decreased progression-free survival, or early predictor of disease recurrence and survival.

    CTC at least one relapse (the 11 to 73 women), 15% of patients with

    This is no detect CTCs (7 out of 229) among those with a recurrence rate of 3% compared with.

    Detected more CTCs, the lower progression-free survival and overall survival.

    After two years of follow-up, progression-free survival in patients with no CTCs was 98%.

    This CTCs 1 or more, two or more first CTCs to 79%, and more CTCs 3 or for those with 87% to 69% of patients were compared.
Lucci and his colleagues conclude:
"Circulating tumor cells in the presence of one or more predicted early recurrence, and reduced overall survival in patients with non-metastatic breast cancer chemonaive. These results suggest that assessment of circulating tumor cells in these patients, suggesting an important prognostic information."
Lucci other primary tumor characteristics, including the size, none of them had to guess whether they find it interesting to CTCs, he said.
She is now the primary site of distant metastasis to try and establish CTCs and to learn what they would not survive outside of the region said.
To start the application to change based on these findings, the early days. Such a large, multi-center trials, further research, but now it must be done to confirm the results. But he detected CTCs in patients with early stage breast cancer treatment should be decided what kind of work you begin to see whether there is a valid test, Lucci said.
Funds Clinician Investigator Award from the Society of Surgical Oncology, Morgan Welch Inflammatory Breast Cancer Program, Personalized Cancer Treatment and the Texas State Institute of Rare and Aggressive Breast Cancer Research Program, was to help pay for education.