Moderate doses of radiation therapy to unaffected breast may prevent second breast cancers — ScienceDaily
source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140123142041.htm
source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140123142041.htm
"Over the past decades, we’ve had great success in treating breast cancer, and the 15-year survival rate is now 77 percent," said study leader David J. Brenner, PhD, director of CUMC’s Center for Radiological Research and the Higgins Professor of Radiation Biophysics. "Unfortunately, breast cancer survivors have a several times higher risk of developing cancer in their other breast, compared with healthy women of the same age." "While drugs such as tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors can reduce the risk somewhat, at least for women with estrogen receptor-positive tumors, the long-term risks of a second breast cancer in the unaffected breast remain high. …
The study, published in Oncotarget, was led by investigators at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC), and included collaborators from Harvard and Columbia Universities, Mayo Clinic and Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. "Our findings suggest that cadherin-11 is important for cancer progression as well as rheumatoid arthritis — for reasons we do not fully understand. …