Breast Cancer Specimens Misdiagnosed: How Accurate Are Your Test Results?
Recent studies have exposed inconsistent and inaccurate results of breast tissues tested for cancer, which has led to the misdiagnosis of cancer. The most troubling aspect is that thousands of women may have failed to receive the proper treatment because of errors in two laboratory tests.
One of these laboratory tests is Her-2, which is used to help determine how aggressive a breast cancer tumor is. The test is done not to diagnose cancer, but to help decide on the proper treatment course once breast cancer has already been diagnosed. If the test is positive then the patient likely has an aggressive tumor that will not only respond poorly to hormone treatment, but to chemotherapy as well.
So these patient will then be treated with Herceptin therapy. Herceptin is an FDA-approved drug that works at slowing the growth of aggressive tumors and at destroying cancerous cells. However, in order to be a candidate for this type of treatment one must first test Her-2 positive because the drug only focuses on Her-2 genes.
The introduction of this drug was a breakthrough- by focusing on a subset of cancer patients the drug was more specific and thereby more effective for its subset. However, because one must first be diagnosed as Her-2 positive before receiving the drug it is crucial that Her-2 testing is accurate. And right now that isn't the case.
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