My onc. sent e-mail about 9 wks. of Herceptin

[Christine MH-UK]

According to a trial description found through google, node-negative patients had to have a greater than 25% chance of recurrence, be progesterone-receptor negative and have a tumour size over 2 cm.

I wish the Finnish scientists had put out a clearer press release. Maybe it was clearer at the conference. It looks like there should be a webscast.

[RobinP]

Hi,

I find the finnish study very interesting, particularly since the media has boosted of the study, noting less Herceptin, 9weeks compared to one year, with less cardiac side effects for those who test positie for her2.However, I would love to see this study reproduced on a larger scale to see if the same findings would results. Additionally, I might add that in the Finnish study, many were on Taxol with herceptin. And it appears that clinically Taxol is more effective than other chemotherapy agents against her2 so we must attribute some of the sucess of the finnish study to Taxol as well.

PS To view the Finnish study, click on main message board, SABC, then on adjuvant herceptin, shortened treatment.

[Christine MH-UK]

Actually, the authors acknowledge that they picked both vinorelbine (navelbine) and docetaxel (taxotere) because herceptin is known to greatly amplify the effect of these drugs. The 50% is the benefit provided by the herceptin, although it is not clear if there was any difference between vinorelbine or taxotere in this regard. Overall, taxotere seemed to work better. From what I have read, taxol is not as synergistic with herceptin.

The length of followup (three years) was good, but the number is small (232). Still, statistically, there was less than a one percent chance that adding the herceptin had not made a difference.

I think it is a good option for patients who can't get herceptin-based chemo by other means.

The weird thing is that the British papers hardly noticed this study, even though there is a massive problem here with her2+++ patients not being able to get herceptin at all.

You are right, RobinP, that scientists generally do think that sequential chemo matters a great deal for her2+ patients, but the Finns did control for that.