New breast cancer drugs could help more than previously thought

Conclusion Advances in genetic technology are happening fast, improving our knowledge about which treatments may be most suitable for which types of cancer. However, testing these theories takes time, which can be frustrating for researchers, when newspaper headlines suggest people should already be receiving new treatments. This study potentially widens the pool of people who may benefit from targeted cancer treatment with PARP inhibitors, from around 5% to around 20%. That's clearly good news, but the potential for benefit needs to be tested in clinical trials. The researchers express a great deal of confidence in the accuracy of their model. It would still be useful to see it externally validated in other groups of people, before we can know how well it performs in the real world. It would also be useful to see how specific the test is, as well as how sensitive it is. One question remains about the 20% figure. It's not clear how the researchers selected people to take part in the study. They deliberately selected 22 patients who were known to have BRCA mutations. But we don't know whether the others in the study were randomly selected and representative of all people with breast cancer. If they were not randomly selected, then the 20% figure may not hold true for the wider population of people with breast cancer. Most people with breast cancer don't have inherited gene mutations. Find out more about predictive genetic tests for cancer risk genes.  Links To The Headlines...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Cancer Genetics/stem cells Medication Source Type: news