A fifth study, from South Africa, did show benefit. Summaries of the studies were released by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and will be presented in full at the group's annual meeting next month in Atlanta. Results have not yet been fully peer reviewed or published. The others involved transplants as initial therapy for very high-risk breast cancer, which has spread to 10 or more lymph nodes. An estimated 43,000 Americans will die of breast cancer this year.
Survival declines even more after five years.
These studies show it to be merely equivalent and with much higher cost and risk of death from the treatment itself vs. the disease, he said. Mary Horowitz, scientific director of the Autologous Blood and Marrow Transplant Registry of North America, which is based at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa, agreed. The benefit, if any, is not dramatic. The cancer institute also said it was sponsoring further studies because these do not close the door on transplantation as a viable treatment. The studies did prompt the American Cancer Society, government health leaders and other advocacy groups to urge women and their physicians to participate in clinical trials and to base treatment decisions on scientific evidence.