An international study shows that now, postmenopausal patients with the most common subtype of breast cancer will be able to do without chemotherapy and its side effects
Among the various subtypes of breast cancer, the so-called luminal is the most frequent, but many of the women who suffer from it will be able to avoid the usual treatment of chemotherapy.
Specifically, postmenopausal patients with these markers: positive hormone receptors (RH+), epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) negative, have between 1 and 3 axillary nodes affected and with a result called recurrence score (score that estimates the risk of recurrence and the probability of benefiting from chemotherapy) equal to less than 25.
Patients who meet these requirements, which represent around 5,300 new cases annually in Spain and they are currently treated with chemotherapy plus hormonal therapy, they will be able to do without the first and be treated with equal efficacy and prognosis only with the second. That is, receive only hormone therapy and avoid ‘chemo’ and its adverse effects.
This is what the study concludes RxPONDER, whose results have been presented at a press conference at the great world event for breast cancer, the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, which this year is held virtually from December 8 to 12.
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It is the first evidence in a randomized phase III clinical trial that postmenopausal women with HR-positive and HER2-negative breast cancer that has spread to one to three lymph nodes can safely forgo chemotherapy if their tumor tissue genomic test recurrence score is 25 or less.
In premenopausal women, ‘chemo’ is maintained
However, the trial also showed, after about five years of follow-up, that premenopausal women with the same characteristics of the disease did benefit from chemotherapy, so it is advisable to continue with it in this group.
The international clinical trial, promoted by the American cooperative group SWOG Cancer Research Network, with the support of National Cancer Institute (NCI) It has been carried out in 632 centers in nine countries: the United States, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Ireland, France, Spain, Korea and Saudi Arabia.
“Every day in clinics around the world, clinicians are faced with the question of how best to treat women with this common form of breast cancer,” says the study’s lead author, Kevin Kalinsky, a researcher at the SWOG network and Emory University in Atlanta (USA), “but these results change practice and demonstrate that postmenopausal women can avoid unnecessary chemotherapy and receive only hormone therapy; this should bring more clarity to clinicians and some relief to patients. ‘
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* Cover photo: fernandozhiminaicela | Pixabay
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