Small breast tumors riskier

Source: Agencies  |   2008-12-14  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

LITTLE breast tumors that seemed cured after surgery were more likely to return if they were the type known as HER2 positive, US researchers have found.

They said women with these tumors types might need extra treatment with drugs such as Genentech's Herceptin, which was not standard practice.

"Most physicians do not treat these small tumors with Herceptin," Dr Ana M. Gonzalez-Angula of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who led the study, said on Friday.

After five years, 23 percent of patients with tiny tumors one centimeter or smaller whose cancer was HER2 positive had tumors return after surgery, she said.

Her team looked at more than 1,300 women between 1990 and 2003. Ten percent had HER2 tumors and they had a much higher likelihood the cancer would return than those with the more common estrogen receptor positive tumors, or those with triple negative tumors.

These three types of tumor each had a different mutation that drove the cancer. Estrogen receptor positive breast tumors were the easiest to treat, with a range of drugs that affected the hormone.

The women, with an average age of 57, had 2.68 times the risk their cancer would return after surgery if they had HER2-positive tumors than the other patients, Gonzalez-Angula said.