New Breast Cancer Research Found A Factor that Doubles Death Risk

Isn’t that a warm fuzzy feeling? Now I want to ask my oncologist if I have this factor. But first let me see if I can explain it. This is the precis:

“Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have discovered that the risk of death from breast cancer is twice as high for patients with high heterogeneity of the estrogen receptor within the same tumour as compared to patients with low heterogeneity. The study, which is published in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, also shows that the higher risk of death over a span of 25 years is independent of other known tumour markers and also holds true for Luminal A breast cancer, a subtype with a generally good prognosis.”

“Why this is the case, however, is not known, but a possible explanation is that there are tumour cells in one and the same tumour with varying degrees of expression of the estrogen receptor. This is known as intra-tumour heterogeneity.”

“Our study shows that patients with high intra-tumour heterogeneity of the estrogen receptor were twice as likely to die up to 25-years after their diagnoses as compared to patients with low heterogeneity,” says Linda Lindström, researcher at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, Karolinska Institutet. “And this was independent of whether or not they’d received tamoxifen and of other known tumour markers.”

Caroline’s Breast Cancer Blog