HER-2-positive breast cancer tied to hormone status

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - HER-2-positive, hormonereceptor-negative breast cancer patients have a high risk oftreatment failure after chemotherapy -- and the most commonsite of cancer recurrence after treatment failure is the brain,Mayo Clinic researchers reported at the San Antonio BreastCancer Symposium.
Breast cancers that are estrogen-receptor andprogesterone-receptor negative are associated with the worstoutcomes and require aggressive treatment right from the timeof diagnosis, Dr. Laura Vallow of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,Minnesota, told Reuters Health.
Her group reviewed records of 120 women with brainmetastases after an initial diagnosis of breast cancer treatedat their institution between June 1996 and November 2006. Ofthese women, data on the gene mutation HER-2 and the hormonereceptor status were available for 83 women.
Of the 83 women, 39 or 47 percent were HER-2-positive.Nearly all (96 percent) had received radiation therapy at thetime brain metastases were diagnosed. The brain was the firstsite of treatment failure in 15 of the 39 women, or 38 percent,with 11 being hormone receptor-negative and 4 beinghormone-positive.
HER-2-positive women with hormone receptor-positive diseasehad an average time from diagnosis to brain metastasis of 45months compared with 14.5 months for HER-2-positive women withhormone-receptor negative disease.
Time to death after diagnosis of brain metastasis was 10months for HER-2-positive, hormone receptor-positive patientscompared with 3 months for HER-2-positive,hormone-receptor-negative disease.
"This isn't the whole population," Vallow pointed out incomments to Reuters Health. "This is just women with brainmetastases and this is a retrospective look. These numbers lookpretty terrible, but the most recent data show thatdisease-free survival has increased 12 percent and the risk ofdeath has decreased 33 percent in our 2005 data."
Furthermore, "With Herceptin available now, we have a drugthat can really make a difference," Vallow stressed.