[Lani]

I have previously posted (3 times or more) about a woman who had a cough while on herceptin which disappeared when she was off it. She agreed to be biopsied (airways) not just while she was on it, but when she was off it to see if they could discover why. It turned out that while on herceptin she made hardly any of the "hair cells" which line the upper nose and filter out incoming "germs" and had about 70% less speciialized cells in her upper airways m such as Goblet cells, which help fight infection.

This is why I like for people to add their symptoms to the thread, now under Herceptin/tykerb, where they are invited to add their herceptin"side=effects" real or perceived. It is not always easy to know if symptoms are due to longer term side-effects of chemo and radiation therapy eg. to the immune system vs. side effects from herceptin. By adding your input, perhaps some researcher/oncologist/drug company person will try to figure all this out. And special thanks to the lady who let them biopsy her airways a second time, even though she was better (happend in Europe as I remember, as no US insurance company would have helped of course! and liability for an unneeded procodure even if she waived her rights would probably still be problematic)

I have also read that it is likely the same thing may hold in a different way for the GI tract ie, that less specialized cells may be made and take longer to replace.

Will try to put the search function on and repost it!