Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands and this lively and historic city is the center of attraction because of the amazing medical breakthrough in the treatment of breast cancer.
The importance of this scientific accomplishment cannot be overemphasised as it is estimated that one out of eight women in the United States will have breast cancer at some stage in their lives.
What Is This Medical Achievement All About?
The combined treatment of breast cancer using two drugs namely:
- Lapatinib
- Herceptin or trastuzumab…
Was unveiled by Prof. Nigel Bundred during a Breast Cancer Conference for European countries in the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
While the drugs had been used in the treatment of breast cancer already albeit as standalone drugs, never had the two drugs been recommended for use together.
The professor and a team of researchers discovered that when the drugs are combined the result was the total destruction of breast cancer cells in a short period of eleven days.
The study was under the financial support of the Cancer Research UK and it involved the combined use of the two drugs to destroy the Human Epidermal Growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) which is a protein which greatly influences the growth as well as spread of malignant cancer cells.
The combined use of the drugs stopped HER2 in its tracks and made recommending chemotherapy and surgery to patients of none effect.
The amazing thing about this treatment is that the side effects from chemotherapy treatment which includes fatigue, hair loss, nausea and vomiting is not experienced by patients.
The Research Findings
The research involved 257 women who had HER 2 positive breast cancer.
These women were broken into two groups, one group were treated with the two drugs combined while the other group was a control group.
It was discovered that from the group placed on the two drugs 11% of the test subjects were cancer free in 14 days of administration while 17% of the women had there tumors significantly reduced in size.
However, for the control group that were placed on Herceptin only, it was seen that none of them had any significant reduction in their cancer cells and 3% only had a slight reduction in the size of their tumor. This proved that when the drugs are administered together they are more effective.
What is worthy of more is that Herceptin drug is under license only to be administered with chemotherapy. The outcome of this research may go a long way in ensuring that this situation changes.
Research is however still ongoing but with the positive outcome from the study it is believed that it’s only a matter of time before the combination of the two drugs is approved for cancer treatment.