Researchers Find New Way to Predict Breast Cancer Recurrence

TUESDAY, Sept. 6 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. researchers say they''ve developed a potentially more accurate way to assess a woman''s risk of breast cancer recurrence.

Currently, doctors predict the chances of breast cancer striking again by determining whether tumor cells have invaded the lymph nodes near the breast.

But researchers at Stanford University say looking at the immune cells in those lymph nodes -- rather than tumor cells -- will yield a more accurate forecast.

"Immune changes in the lymph node almost perfectly predict clinical outcome, much better than any other prognostic factor that is available today," senior author Dr. Peter P. Lee, an assistant professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said in a prepared statement.

Using samples of 77 breast cancer patients'' lymph nodes, Lee and his colleagues identified unique patterns of immune cells in patients who remained cancer-free after five years.

Reporting in this Sept. 6 online issue of the Public Library of Science-Medicine, the Stanford team showed that immune changes within lymph nodes predicted clinical outcome even better than their tumor invasion status.

"The nice thing about this technique is that it could be applied to all women with breast cancer," lead researcher Dr. Holbrook Kohrt said in a prepared statement. "It''s a shot in the arm for the field," he added, noting that "these findings argue that the immune system is more important in cancer than previously thought."

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-- Dennis Thompson

SOURCES: Stanford University, news release, Sept. 5, 2005