WORDS BY MAGGIE LOISELLE ILLUSTRATION BY KATIE KORDESH
An estimated one in eight American women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime, according to the American Cancer Society. If you’re a mom reading this, you already have the two biggest risk factors for developing the disease: 1) being a woman and 2) getting older.
the latest in
Breast Cancer Research Following advancements in the prevention, detection and treatment of breast cancer
But the science is on our side. Every day, new discoveries are being made when it comes to preventing, detecting, treating and recovering from breast cancer. Here are some the latest advancements.
No Chemo Needed The dreaded chemotherapy may not be necessary for the majority of women with the most common type of breast cancer, according to a groundbreaking new clinical trial. The TAILOR x trial began in 2006 and enrolled more than 10,000 women around the world with early stage estrogen receptor positive breast cancer that did not involve the lymph nodes. Researchers used a 21-gene expression test to categorize women as low risk, intermediate risk and high risk for their cancer returning. Previous studies had shown that women in the high-risk category did best with both chemotherapy and hormone therapy, while women with low risk only needed hormone therapy. But there wasn’t much known about the women who fell in the middle. As part of the trial, women with intermediate risk were randomly assigned to hormone therapy alone or hormone therapy with chemo.
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