herceptin treatment improves brain metastasis outcomes
 

although associated with a higher incidence of brain metastases (partly by allowing patients to live longer ie, long enough to get brain metastases)

: Br J Cancer. 2009 Feb 24. [Epub ahead of print]

Trastuzumab treatment improves brain metastasis outcomes through control and durable prolongation of systemic extracranial disease in HER2-overexpressing breast cancer patients.

Park YH, Park MJ, Ji SH, Yi SY, Lim DH, Nam DH, Lee JI, Park W, Choi DH, Huh SJ, Ahn JS, Kang WK, Park K, Im YH.
1Division of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
In patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2)-overexpressing breast cancer, treatment with trastuzumab has been shown to markedly improve the outcome. We investigated the role of trastuzumab on brain metastasis (BM) in HER2-positive breast cancer patients. From 1999 to 2006, 251 patients were treated with palliative chemotherapy for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer at Samsung Medical Center. The medical records of these patients were analysed to study the effects of trastuzumab on BM prevalence and outcomes. Patients were grouped according to trastuzumab therapy: pre-T (no trastuzumab therapy) vs post-T (trastuzumab therapy). The development of BM between the two treatment groups was significantly different (37.8% for post-T vs 25.0% for pre-T, P=0.028). Patients who had received trastuzumab had longer times to BM compared with patients who were not treated with trastuzumab (median 15 months for post-T group vs 10 months for pre-T group, P=0.035). Time to death (TTD) from BM was significantly longer in the post-T group than in the pre-T group (median 14.9 vs 4.0 months, P=0.0005). Extracranial disease control at the time of BM, 12 months or more of progression-free survival of extracranial disease and treatment with lapatinib were independent prognostic factors for TTD from BM.British Journal of Cancer advance online publication, 24 February 2009; doi:10.1038/sj.bjc.6604941 www.bjcancer.com.
PMID: 19240719

Thanks for this article Lani. Brain M was one of the things I talked about with the Doctor in Seattle on Friday.

Amelia

Thank you for the info - as always you are a great help.

brain metastasis
 

Lani,
Where can I find definitive statistics about brain metastasis (BM) related to her-2 positive breast cancer. What % of her-2 positive cancer victims suffer BM? This is a major cause of concern for me as I face the end of my treatment in May. Thanks for any info you can offer.
Brenda

busy but...
 

go to the yellow bar above and click on search.

put in Lani brain met (that should cover mets or metastasis or metastases in the search) I have provided info from at least a dozen articles over the years I would think

Otherwise be a DIY (do it yourselfer) and go to google and put in
Entrez Pub Med
once you get the right entry click on it and put
erbb2 brain metastasis into the search box

you will find hundreds if not thousands of articles

Sorry but I have to go. I know I have posted most of the best ones I found, but you now have two ways to look..besides,You may be looking for info I was not posting

Lots of luck!

Thank-You,
Brenda

Thanks for the article, Lani!

Brenda - I was at the YSC conference in Dallas this weekend and Dr. Eric Winer put the statistic somewhere between 30-40% of Stage IV Her2+ will develop brain mets. I pray you are not one of them.

Brain mets VS which stage at DX.
 

It is my recollection that the number is around 10% of HER2 positive patients will develop brain mets as a first site rendering them stageIV at that point.

We have had a few gals here who had this pattern, and some who never had the mets go anyplace else.