herceptin treatment improves brain metastasis outcomes

[Lani]

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