(Press-News.org) After a breast cancer operation, the removed tumour is always examined, as its subtype can provide an indication of how aggressive the disease is. The patient's lymph nodes are not analysed in the same way. Yet the breast tumour can sometimes appear to be of a less aggressive type while the subtype in the lymph nodes gives a different and more worrying picture.
In these cases, it is the lymph nodes that provide the correct prognosis, according to new research at Lund University in Sweden. An analysis of the proliferation, hormone receptor status and HER2 status of the lymph nodes would in many cases show a significantly more accurate picture of the risk of metastases, i.e. a recurrence of the disease and its spreading to other organs.
"It would be easy to add such an analysis. It does not require any expensive specialist technology, but only an extension of the normal, routine pathology work", says Lisa Rydén, a consultant surgeon and researcher at Lund University.
The study covers 500 women in the early stages of breast cancer who underwent surgery in Lund or Helsingborg. Early-stage breast cancer is when the cancer has not yet spread to other organs. However, in approximately one third of all the women who underwent surgery for early-stage breast cancer, there were traces of the tumour in the lymph nodes, which can provide important additional information.
"Sometimes the molecular study showed the same subtype in the breast tissue and in the lymph nodes. But sometimes the types were different. And when we investigated the outcomes for the women 10 years later, the prognosis followed the subtype that was present in the lymph nodes and not the one in the breast", says Lisa Rydén.
Thus when doctors only examine the breast tissue, there is a risk that the tumour will be found to be of a low-risk type, which affects decisions on further treatment. The lymph nodes may meanwhile show signs of a more aggressive form of tumour, but that is never discovered.
"If, on the other hand, we start routinely analysing the lymph nodes as well, we can treat women in such cases with additional cytostatic and targeted drugs after their operation. This could prevent later recurrence of the disease" thinks Lisa Rydén.
A fairly small proportion of the patients in the study showed a difference in tumour type between the breast tissue and the lymph nodes. But since breast cancer is such a common disease, the number of patients affected nationally and globally will still be considerable and, for them, the difference can be that between life and death, the Lund researcher points out.
### END
Examination of lymph nodes provides more accurate breast cancer prognosis
2013-07-29
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Young cannabis-smokers aware of the health risks
2013-07-29
91 percent of on average 20-year-old Swiss men drink alcohol, almost half of whom drink six beverages or more in a row and are thus at-risk consumers. 44 percent of Swiss men smoke tobacco, the majority of whom are at-risk consumers – they smoke at least once a day. 36 percent of young adults smoke cannabis, whereby over half are at-risk consumers, using the drug at least twice a week. Researchers from the University of Zurich's Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine investigated whether these young Swiss men read up on addictive substances such as alcohol, tobacco, ...
Borneo's orangutans are coming down from the trees
2013-07-29
Orangutans might be the king of the swingers, but primatologists in Borneo have found that the great apes spend a surprising amount of time walking on the ground. The research, published in the American Journal of Primatology found that it is common for orangutans to come down from the trees to forage or to travel, a discovery which may have implications for conservation efforts.
An expedition led by Brent Loken from Simon Fraser University and Dr. Stephanie Spehar from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, travelled to the East Kalimantan region of Borneo. The region's ...
The best of 2 worlds: Solar hydrogen production breakthrough
2013-07-29
This news release is available in German. The photo anode, which is made from the metal oxide bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) to which a small amount of tungsten atoms was added, was sprayed onto a piece of conducting glass and coated with an inexpensive cobalt phosphate catalyst. "Basically, we combined the best of both worlds," explains Prof. Dr. Roel van de Krol, head of the HZB Institute for Solar Fuels: "We start with a chemically stable, low cost metal oxide, add a really good but simple silicon-based thin film solar cell, and – voilà – we've just created a cost-effective, ...
Cockatoos know what is going on behind barriers
2013-07-29
This news release is available in German.
VIDEO:
How do you know that the cookies are still there although they have been placed out of your sight into the drawer? Alice Auersperg and her team from the University...
Click here for more information.
How do you know that the cookies are still there although they have been placed out of your sight into the drawer? How do you know ...
Researchers identify genetic mutation linked to congenital heart disease
2013-07-29
A mutation in a gene crucial to normal heart development could play a role in some types of congenital heart disease—the most common birth defect in the U.S. The finding, from a team in The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, could help narrow the search for genes that contribute to this defect, which affects as many as 40,000 newborns a year. The findings were published in a recent issue of in Human Mutation.
Several hundred genes have been implicated in the formation of the heart, and a mutation in any of them could potentially contribute to a cardiac ...
Danes contract Salmonella infections abroad
2013-07-29
These are some of the findings presented in the annual report on the occurrence of diseases that can be transmitted to humans from animal and food. The report is prepared by the Danish Zoonosis Centre at the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark in collaboration with Statens Serum Institut and the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration.
In 2012, 1,198 Danes were registered with a Salmonella infection, which corresponds to 21 cases per 100,000 citizens. It is a little more than the record-low incidence in 2011. Nearly half (45 percent) of all Salmonella ...
When fluid dynamics mimic quantum mechanics
2013-07-29
CAMBRIDGE, Mass- In the early days of quantum physics, in an attempt to explain the wavelike behavior of quantum particles, the French physicist Louis de Broglie proposed what he called a "pilot wave" theory. According to de Broglie, moving particles — such as electrons, or the photons in a beam of light — are borne along on waves of some type, like driftwood on a tide.
Physicists' inability to detect de Broglie's posited waves led them, for the most part, to abandon pilot-wave theory. Recently, however, a real pilot-wave system has been discovered, in which a drop of ...
Seemingly competitive co-catalysts cooperate to accelerate chemical reaction
2013-07-29
CHESTNUT HILL, MA (July 29, 2013) – A new, computationally-inspired approach has led a team of Boston College chemists to re-conceptualize a highly valued catalytic process, dramatically increasing the efficiency of a chemical transformation that selectively produces chiral, or handed, molecules valued for medical and life sciences research, the team reports in the current online edition of the journal Nature Chemistry.
The new approach allows for reducing the reaction time to less than an hour, down from a period of two to five days, the team reports. That gain was accompanied ...
Head hits can be reduced in youth football
2013-07-29
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Less contact during practice could mean a lot less exposure to head injuries for young football players, according to researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and Virginia Tech.
Their study of 50 youth-league players ages 9 to 12 -- the largest ever conducted to measure the effects of head impacts in youth football -- found that contact in practice, not games, was the most significant variable when the number and force of head hits incurred over the course of a season were measured. Numerous studies in this area have been done on high school ...
Early exposure to insecticides gives amphibians higher tolerance later
2013-07-29
PITTSBURGH -- Amphibians exposed to insecticides early in life—even those not yet hatched—have a higher tolerance to those same insecticides later in life, according to a recent University of Pittsburgh study.
Published in Evolutionary Applications, the Pitt study found that wood frog populations residing farther from agricultural fields are not very tolerant to a particular type of insecticide, but they can become more tolerant with early exposure.
"This is the first study to show that tadpole tolerance to insecticides can be influenced by exposure to insecticides ...