Some very good news might be around the corner for breast cancer patients, with senior medical experts’ finding a novel breast cancer drug effective enough to even become a ‘cure’ for cancer patients.
Leading medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine cited effects of the initial tests of the newfound anti-cancer drug, Herceptin, on women suffering from “early stage breast cancer”, and found that the results were absolutely stunning, or “revolutionary, not evolutionary”, saying that they represented a “dramatic and perhaps permanent perturbation in the natural history of the disease, maybe even a cure”.
The journal further revealed that Herceptin also lessened recurrence risks of the cancer by as much as 46%, and that women diagnosed with HER2 positive breast cancer could be treated much differently now.
Supposedly a monoclonal antibody manufactured by Genentech Inc., Herceptin is priced at $4,800 for one year of treatment and has insurance cover. Dr. David Nathanson, breast cancer expert at Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital, said that the drug had received wide acclaim even at the conference of the American College of Surgeons in San Francisco, and more drugs like these were in the offing.
Nevertheless, in spite of harbouring such remarkable attributes, Herceptin is currently available purely to people suffering from advanced breast cancer, as early stage cancer patients are yet to receive a licence for this ‘miracle’ drug at least till next summer.
This discrepancy has been criticised by many who feel that women with early stage cancers do not deserve to go through the pain of the advanced cancer stages when there is a drug available to arrest or even cure this perilous disease.
Posted
on : Sat, 22 Oct 2005 05:45 GMT | General News
By : Pippa Fielding
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