Half of Women With Early-stage Breast Cancer Don’t Need Chemotherapy - report

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A new study has found that women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer don’t always need chemotherapy.

Even though chemotherapy drugs have harsh side effects, many women with small or early-stage tumors receive treatment after surgery because doctors think there is a high risk the cancer will return and spread.

But based on the findings of a multi-center European study, researchers have concluded that 46 percent of women thought to have early high-risk tumors did not need drug treatment.

They studied a test called MammaPrint, which analyzes the genetics of the tumor, telling doctors which women are good candidates for chemotherapy.

European researchers enrolled almost 6,700 women with early stage breast cancer from 112 institutions in nine European countries between 2007 and 2011 to investigate the so-called 70-gene signature test.

Fatima Cardoso, a medical oncologist with the Champalimaud Cancer Center in Lisbon, Portugal, is the principal investigator of the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“By analyzing all these characteristics of the tumor, like fingerprint or the ID card of the tumor,"we were able to better characterize the biology of the disease and to understand if the tumor had a high risk of relapse or a lower risk of relapse.”