Science / Medicine : Test Quantifies Risk of Cancer Recurrence

A new test appears effective at identifying early breast cancer patients at greatest risk for suffering a life-threatening recurrence of the disease, researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said last week. In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers reported that breast cancer patients who test positively for a protein called Hpr have nearly four times the chances that their cancer will come back, indicating that they may be candidates for the strongest cancer-fighting drugs initially.

The researchers tested cancer tissue samples from 70 women diagnosed with Stage 1 and Stage 2 breast cancer from 1977 through 1985. Those who tested positively for Hpr had nearly four times the risk of suffering a recurrence compared to those who did not in the 11 years after diagnosis, the researchers found. Although they are not sure how Hpr, or haptoglobin-related protein, would influence the chances of having a recurrence, scientists suspect that the protein may play a role in the cancer’s ability to spread.