Women Carrying Cancer Gene Respond Better to Therapy

Women who carry a gene mutation that makes them more likely to develop ovarian cancer are, unexpectedly, more responsive to chemotherapy in the advanced stages of the disease than women who develop the disease but do not have the flaw, according to researchers from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The team analyzed tissue samples from 189 patients treated for advanced ovarian cancer at the center. They reported in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Assn. that women with the defective gene lived two years longer.

Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II