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The Horowhenua Pink Ladies Breast Cancer Support (BCS) Group has had a busy few months. They have welcomed several new members since Christmas so have had a lot of new women in their local area to support.
They enjoy seeing all their members at the monthly meetings which are held on the third Wednesday of every month at the Salvation Army Lounge in Levin - normally there are between 25 and 30 women attending these meetings.
A new study has found that acupuncture significantly reduces joint pain for post-menopausal women with early-stage breast cancer taking aromatase inhibitors.
The research, presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, involved a randomised controlled trial comparing acupuncture, sham acupuncture and no acupuncture.
Lead researcher Dr Dawn Hershaman says aromatase inhibitors are among the most common and effective treatments given to post-menopausal women diagnosed with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer.
A combination of the breakthrough drug Keytruda and Herceptin is well tolerated and has clinical benefits for patients with Herceptin-resistant HER2-positive breast cancer.
The new treatment regimen was tested in a clinical trial on patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer that had continued to grow on Herceptin (trastuzumab) therapies.
The results were presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium and researchers say they suggest that immunotherapy approaches could work in patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer that is resistant to Herceptin.
Lead researcher, Dr Sherene Loi says approximately 20 percent of invasive breast cancers are HER2-positive, and some of these patients will develop resistance to trastuzumab.
Increasing the dose intensity of chemotherapy by shortening the time period between treatments may help to reduce the risk of breast cancer recurring, a new study shows.
The research, presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, also noted that delivering drugs sequentially rather than at the same time helped to reduce the risk of recurrence and death.
The study involved a meta-analysis of a number of clinical trials comparing treatments in which chemotherapy was given every two weeks instead of every three weeks, and others in which anthracycline and taxane-based chemotherapies were infused sequentially rather than concurrently as is usual practice.
The Breast Cancer Aotearoa Coalition (BCAC) is pushing for the chemotherapy drug, Abraxane, to be publicly funded for women with advanced breast cancer.
BCAC has lodged an application with the Government’s drug-buying agency, PHARMAC, to publicly fund the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer.
Abraxane was approved as safe and effective for use in New Zealand in 2010 and is widely used in other countries. It has fewer side-effects than other similar chemotherapy drugs.
BCAC chairperson, Libby Burgess, says oncologists have been calling for the medicine to be publicly funded for the past eight years and it’s high time it was more widely available.
This phase two, pragmatic, randomised controlled trial will compare lymph node grafting, in addition to standard lymphoedema therapy against standard lymphoedema therapy alone.
The trial is recruiting for new participants and researchers want to hear from you if you meet the following criteria and want to take part:
Trial design
A randomised, open label, Phase 3 study of abemaciclib combined with standard adjuvant endocrine therapy alone in patients with high risk, node positive, early stage, hormone receptor positive, HER2 negative breast cancer.
The aim of this study, MonarchE, is to evaluate whether the combination of abemaciclib plus standard adjuvant endocrine therapy improves outcomes in participants with a certain type of breast cancer compared to adjuvant endocrine therapy alone.
This is a randomised phase III trial of adjuvant radiation therapy versus observation following breast conserving surgery and endocrine therapy in patients with molecularly characterised luminal A early breast cancer.
The purpose of this study is to see whether a specialised laboratory test (Prosigna (PAM50) Assay) of breast cancer tissue can be used to choose women who can safely avoid radiation therapy because there is a low risk of the cancer coming back.
Bariatric surgery (reducing the size of the stomach) for severely obese women could lower their breast cancer risk by more than a third, according to a new study.
The research from University of Cincinnati College of Medicine has been published in the journal the Annals of Surgery and reviewed the medical data of more than 100,000 people in the United States.
Lead researcher, Dr Daniel Schauer, says the results were surprising.
"We found having bariatric surgery is associated with a reduced risk of cancer, especially obesity-associated cancers including postmenopausal breast cancer, endometrial cancer, pancreatic cancer and colon cancer. What’s surprising is how great the risk of cancer was reduced,” he says.
Metavivors NZ members were in full force at BCAC’s Annual General Meeting at Domain Lodge in Auckland recently. PHARMAC CEO, Steffan Crausaz also attended, as did Breast Cancer Support co-chairs Judith Shinegold and Lesley Harper, Michele Urlich from the Lymphoedema Support Network, and several other BCAC members.
BCAC Chairperson, Libby Burgess, described another full year of activity for BCAC. She thanked the 3,000 people who joined BCAC’s online campaign to let the Minister of Health know of the desperate need for better treatments for those with advanced breast cancer.
