Taxol, one of the most popular chemotherapy drugs used for breast cancer in women, has been found not to be effective as a cancer fighter and treatment in the most common forms of breast cancer, or at least not nearly as effective as it was once thought against breast cancer. 

The numbers of women who are receiving this form of chemotherapy right now here in the US, which accounts for almost half of the total number of patients with breast cancer currently, could potentially be pulled off this chemotherapy drug if supporting evidence continues to the point that it is not found to be useful in treatment at all, and they could escape the terrible side effects of this drug since it may not even be helping them in the first place.

Scary stuff, huh?  The catch 22 here is of course this preliminary data, which must be enough to get researchers to do a second round of investigation to see if the first round of results is indeed correct.  Plus, there is quite a bit at stake here, since they don’t want to take patients off Taxol before they have 100% conclusive evidence that it is not really doing them any good.  They also do not want patients to be on the drug which can cause bad side effects if they aren’t gaining any benefit from it. 

Researchers are saying that although this drug has been available well over a decade, this new research was not available to them due to the onset of genetic testing lately and the advances in science that allowed them to do such research to determine whether it was effective. 

Researchers are also saying that this and other significant findings in the world of breast cancer research are all pointing to the fact that breast cancer is no longer a disease that can be treated the same in every woman, but rather it will be a unique approach for every patient’s treatment, most likely dependant on the type of cancer and some sort of genetic testing as well.  While this may seem like disappointing news, it’s actually a sign that breast cancer research is advancing, and that’s always good news.   

This entry was posted on October 24, 2007 at 12:43 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Breast Cancer Prevention Breasts in the News by Breast News Girl No Comments Yet