Advances in Breast Cancer Treatment

If you keep up on news about breast cancer, one of the biggest health concerns for women today, you may know that lately there have been some promising developments in treatment and detection options. 

Advances in the treatment of breast cancer, as well as new techniques and tests for earlier breast cancer detection may be on the horizon a lot sooner than we thought, and they provide promise for what is a potentially deadly disease.

One of the most “futuristic” advances is a new technique they are working on for early detection amongst other things, where a woman takes a “gene test” to see what her odds are of getting breast cancer.  Not only that, but it goes a step further to tell women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer what type of treatment they should seek, and what their chances of mortality are if they don’t get a mastectomy. 

Researchers are looking at the gene test as a means to spare women of mastectomies if they don’t need them, and whether their chances of survival are the same with or without the somewhat disfiguring surgery.  The possibilities that splinter off from the breast cancer gene test also have some pretty heavy implications for other areas of breast cancer research, as they may be able to help researchers determine the risk factors involved as well as further treatment options based on genetic profiles.

The interesting part about genetic research is that more than a decade ago, those in the medical profession were predicting that genetic testing would help to avoid improperly treating a patient, or giving them a drug that did not agree with their individual body chemistry.  The new gene testing is definitely a partial realization of that prediction, and other diseases may soon follow, if they haven’t already.

A perfect example of genetic testing coming into play with the treatment of breast cancer is the fairly new breast cancer intervention drug called tamoxifen.  Tamoxifen is a drug that is designed to literally starve breast cancer cells of estrogen, which is what breast cancer feeds off once it has begun to multiply. 

Tamoxifen does not work alone though, it has to actually work in conjunction with certain liver enzymes which not every woman has in that same quantity.  Using genetic testing would help oncologists determine whether a patient would respond well to drugs like Tamoxifen, based on their genetic profile (in this case, whether the patient produces enough of this liver enzyme). 

In another advance in breast cancer prevention, it was determined that an osteoporosis drug called Raloxifene is effective at preventing breast cancer in women with a high risk of getting the disease.  In a study of about 2,000 high risk women (women which were menopausal and overweight), it was found that both Raloxifene and Tamoxifen reduced the women’s risk of getting breast cancer by almost 50%. 

Both of these drugs act in a way that suppresses dangerously high levels of estrogen.  Raloxifene is actually bound for FDA approval within the next twelve months if all goes well, specifically as a preventative measure for women in the high breast cancer risk category.