Sharp rise in UK breast cancer survival rates
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Earlier detection and better treatments have pushed up breast cancer survival rates in England and Wales where two thirds of newly diagnosed women are likely to be alive 20 years later, scientists said on Monday.
New figures released by the charity Cancer Research UK show Britain is gaining ground on France, Switzerland and the Nordic countries which have among the highest survival rates for breast cancer in Europe.
“We have been catching up,” Professor Michel Coleman, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told reporters.
“Long-term survival is increasing and has been increasing steadily for the past 15-20 years.”
About 72 percent of all women diagnosed with the illness in England and Wales will survive 10 years and 66 percent will reach the 20-year mark.
For women between 50 and 69 years old, the age when the disease is most commonly detected, nearly 72 percent will survive 20 years and 80 percent will live 10 years after their diagnosis, according to the latest predictions.
The figures are a vast improvement from the 1990s when women had a 54-percent chance of living more than 10 years and 44 percent of reaching 20 years.
In most developed countries, five-year survival rates for the illness are higher than 70 percent.
Professor Tony Howell, a cancer specialist at the Christie Hospital in Manchester, England, described the predicted rises in survival from breast cancer as extraordinary.
“This is a triumph,” he said. “It means women have a higher risk of dying of something else.”
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide. More than a million cases occur each year and about 400,000 women die of the disease, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France.
Coleman said early detection of the disease and improvements in surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and new drugs were the reasons for the improved figures, which are based on the latest available data on deaths from the illness.
New treatments such as aromatase inhibitors, which suppress the production of oestrogen in post-menopausal women, could improve the figures even more.
Herceptin, made by Switzerland’s Roche Holding AG, is also expected to have an impact. The drug, designed for women with an aggressive cancer that tests positive for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, known as HER-2, has been shown to reduce recurrence of the disease by 50 percent, according to Howell.
Trials are now being conducted to determine the drug’s impact on survival.
“This is the first time we have been able to predict such a huge improvement in long-term survival,” said Dr. Richard Sullivan, of Cancer Research UK.
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