NHS will fund breast cancer tests that help avoid chemo

ALMOST 10,000 women a year are to benefit from NHS breast cancer tests that could spare them the stress of chemotherapy.

A U-turn by the health watchdog Nice means three types of tests can now be routinely offered to women.

They had been rejected in January because they weren’t seen as cost-effective.

At the time, charities accused Nice of a ‘backwards step’ as the tests are regarded as the future of breast cancer treatment.

They work by measuring the activity of up to 50 genes in a tumour sample removed during surgery.

A score between one and 100 is calculated, which tells doctors how aggressive the cancer is and whether it will return.

A high score suggests the cancer is very aggressive and women would be offered chemotherapy.

A low score suggests the cancer is very slow growing. In these cases doctors will suggest women avoid chemotherapy and its gruelling side- effects of infections, hair loss and extreme tiredness.

Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive of charity Breast Cancer Now, said: ‘This major reversal represents real progress for patients.

‘Prognostic tests like these are showing great potential to personalise breast cancer treatment and enable some women to be safely spared the gruelling side-effects of chemotherapy.’ She added: ‘Even the possibility of chemotherapy can cause great anxiety for many patients after their diagnosis, and these tools to help predict the risk of recurrence will now be invaluable in guiding decisions about whether this treatment is necessary.’

Experts say the three tests – Oncotype DX, EndoPredict and Prosigna – will, in future, enable women to have much more personalised treat-

‘Spared gruelling side-effects’

ment. The costs of the tests is not known but it is likely that their manufacturers have significantly reduced the price since January.

Scientists from Cambridge and UCL are carrying out a major trial of the Prosigna test on 4,500 patients. They are hoping to show that women who avoided chemotherapy had just as good survival rates, if not better, than those who had it.

Researchers eventually hope to be able to offer patients a tailored set of drugs based on their test scores.

There are just over 55,000 new cases of breast cancer a year in the UK and around 11,400 deaths.