A Cure for Breast Cancer? Not So Fast
Reported November 11, 2005
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — Reports that the drug Herceptin might be a cure for early breast cancer may be too optimistic for their own good, report editors of The Lancet.
They find recently published studies on the treatment fail to meet the rigorous scientific standards necessary to determine whether a drug works.
The debate over Herceptin heated up earlier this fall when The New England Journal of Medicine published studies suggesting the drug is effective in treating breast cancer found in its early stages. An editorial accompanying the studies used the word “cure,” and it was picked up by the media, which promoted the treatment to women worldwide.
A recent review in The Journal of the American Medical Association, however, urged doctors to view the results of the studies with skepticism, and now these editors from The Lancet concur, noting the studies in question reported only early results, which can be misleading, and didnt use the same dosing schedule, which makes it difficult to compare the two.
They also failed to report overall survival rates, as well as disease-free survival rates, and lacked information on toxicity, which is important because the drug has been known to cause severe heart failure in some cases.
The authors write, “The best that can be said about Herceptins efficacy and safety for the treatment of early breast cancer is that the available evidence is insufficient to make reliable judgments.”
SOURCE: The Lancet, published online Nov. 9, 2005