Herceptin Reduces Death Rates among Breast Cancer Patients

Research has been on for quite a while for an effective drug to combat breast cancer. On Thursday, the results of a new study found that in the case of breast cancer, Herceptin could be the drug that could make the difference. The findings of the study have been published in The Lancet, and validate the findings of previous research efforts.

The study focused on breast cancer patients who were given Herceptin after surgery and chemotherapy. The study found that the drug provided better survival chances of survival, after three years, to women who took the drug than to those who did not.

Studies have shown earlier that roughly 15 to 25 percent of all breast cancer patients show unusually high levels of the HER2/neu receptor. This causes the cancer to be more aggressive than in the case of the others. The drug Herceptin (trastuzumab) binds itself to the part of the receptor outside the cell, thereby blocking its activity.

The drug has changed the prognosis among women patients with HER-2 positive metastatic breast cancer dramatically, especially when it is combined with chemotherapy. It has now been declared the standard therapy to marginalize the risk of recurrence among patients with this form of cancer. It is also being currently prescribed for patients in the early stages of HER2-positive form of cancer.

The study, called the Herceptin Adjuvant or HERA study involved two groups of women. One group of 1,703 randomly-selected women patients was given Herceptin a year after surgery and chemotherapy. Another group of 1,698 women were not given the drug. All these women had HER2-positive breast cancer, and were tracked over a two-year time frame.

The results proved that Herceptin could be an effective drug for this form of cancer. 90 women died in the group that was not given Herceptin compared to 59 in the Herceptin group. The study was conducted at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, and is part of numerous international efforts to test the effect of Herceptin in women with HER2-positive cancer.

The one major that has had everyone talking about Herceptin is the response time. The benefits of the drug have been visible very quickly. Only one other drug, tamoxifen, has shown such rapid survival benefits.

The reactions to the study were far and wide. As Dr. Lauren Cassell, a breast surgeon at the Lennox Hill Hospital in New York said, “This just confirms what we started doing at least a year ago. It's validating what's become the standard of care here in the U.S.”

There is, however, one major side effect to Herceptin usage – the likelihood of cardiac damage. However, as an accompanying comment paper said, cardiac damage was a lesser threat, almost trivial, when compared to breast cancer.