News by Subject Medicine & Health

The finding that breast tumours can evolve to express low HER2 potentially widens the number of patients who can benefit from new investigational agents, typically novel antibody-drug conjugate therapies, that are currently in clinical trials for HER2-low tumours.

Loneliness and social isolation have been significant problems for the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic, but for cancer patients these issues were particularly acute, likely due to isolation and social distancing, according to a new UCSF study.

A study involving researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Gothenburg University in Sweden has found that low levels of a protein called PDGFRb are associated with particularly good results of radiotherapy in women with early-stage breast cancer. The study, which is published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, also suggests that the efficacy of radiotherapy can be improved with drugs that block this protein.

The decision to prevent breast cancer through a risk-reducing mastectomy is based on a woman's lifetime risk of the disease as well as on quality-of-life issues. The dialogue should include consideration of nonsurgical options such as screening and medications, according to a new article in JAMA, coauthored by a surgical oncologist from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

A study presented at the ESMO Breast Cancer 2021 Virtual Congress has shown that breast cancer survivors differ widely in the burden of symptoms they experience after the end of treatment and thereby revealed an unmet need for tailored approaches to follow-up care.

Medical researchers at Flinders University have established a new link between high body mass index (BMI) and breast cancer survival rates -- with clinical data revealing worse outcomes for early breast cancer (EBC) patients and improved survival rates in advanced breast cancer (ABC).

What The Study Did: Using insurance claims data, the change in screening rates for breast, colorectal and prostate cancers during the COVID-19 pandemic were estimated as well as the overall decline in cancer screening last year among the U.S. population.

Concerns about fertility often influence how young women with breast cancer approach treatment decisions and are a reason for forgoing or delaying hormone-blocking therapy, a new study by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute investigators shows.