Pregnant Women have Better Breast Cancer Recovery Rate
According to researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, a woman who is pregnant and has breast cancer is more likely to recover and survive disease-free than a woman who is not pregnant and has breast cancer. The findings will surprise most experts because people tend to associate pregnancy with worse cancer outcomes.
Dr. Jennifer Litton, assistant professor at MD Anderson’s Department of Breast Medical Oncology says that “Until now, older registry studies showed that breast cancer patients treated while pregnant had a worse outcome. However, in the past, these patients weren’t always treated consistently with standard of care chemotherapy and often delayed their therapy until after delivery.”
Litton, the study’s first and corresponding author went on to add that “Given MD Anderson’s experience in treating pregnant patients and our registry, we were able to look at these women treated by the same physicians, at the same institution, with the same standard of care.”
The first protocol which examined the chemotherapeutic regimen for the management of breast cancer during pregnancy was opened by Richard Theriault, D.O., in 1992. Theriault published studies demonstrating the efficacy and safety of the regimen for the pregnant mother and her child. This regimen has since been adopted as standard care.
MD Anderson has the oldest, active prospective registry anywhere in the world, which follows the health of women who had breast cancer while pregnant, as well as their children.
Researchers had selected 75 females who had been treated for breast cancer while they were pregnant. They were compared to 150 non-pregnant women who were treated for breast cancer by using the centers tumor registry and the Department of Breast Medical Oncology database.
All the women had been treated at MD Anderson between 1989 and 2008, based on year of diagnosis, age and cancer stage. Those who gave birth within one year of being diagnosed were not included in the comparison group.
73.94% of those in the pregnant group were alive and disease free after five years, compared to 55.75% of the controls. Overall survival among the pregnant group was 77.42%, compared to 71.86% among the controls.
“From this data set and our study, we are not sure why our pregnant breast cancer patients had better outcomes than those who were not,” said Litton. “Is there something biological in the milieu of pregnancy that changes the response to chemotherapy? Or were these patients treated more aggressively?”
The researchers say they do not know why the disease-free overall survival rates were so different in the two groups. They say finding out is a “research priority.”
Source: MD Anderson Cancer Center (University of Texas)