基因測試或將助乳腺癌患者避免化療
More than a hundred thousand women diagnosed with breast cancer in Europe and the US each year could avoid chemotherapy by taking a gene test made by Agendia, a Dutch biotech group, which can attempt to predict whether the disease is likely to return.
通過接受一家荷蘭生物科技集團Agendia開發的一項基因測試，每年確診患有乳腺癌的逾10萬名歐美女性可能不必接受化療。Agendia可以嘗試預測癌症有無復發可能。
Women with early-stage breast cancer are often given chemotherapy after surgery if their tumours are over a certain size or have started to spread to the lymph nodes, factors which suggest they have a high clinical risk of suffering a recurrence.
被確診患有早期乳腺癌的女性，如果腫瘤尺寸超過一定範圍或者開始擴散到淋巴結（這些因素暗示，癌症復發的臨牀風險非常高），那麼通常會在手術之後接受化療。
But many of them are believed to gain little benefit from undergoing the punishing therapy.
但據信她們中許多人接受這種折磨人的治療之後，幾乎沒有收到任何療效。
According to the results of a large clinical study, to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on Thursday,
根據週四發表於《新英格蘭醫學雜誌》(NEJM)上的一項大型臨牀研究的結果，
patients who were deemed by the test to have a low genomic risk of recurrent cancer — and who subsequently did not receive chemotherapy — had a similar chance of surviving compared with those who were given the toxic treatment.
測試後被認爲從基因組角度衡量癌症復發風險很低——並且隨後沒有接受化療——的患者，其生存概率跟那些接受了這種有毒性的療法的患者差不多。
Agendia said that of the roughly 445,000 women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer each year in Europe and the US, around 102,000 of them could be able to forego chemotherapy after taking the so-called MammaPrint test.
Agendia表示，在大約44.5萬名每年被確認患有早期乳腺癌的歐美女性中，10.2萬人在經過所謂MammaPrint測試之後，可能有能力放棄化療。
The MammaPrint test costs roughly $3,000, but could result in a net reduction in healthcare costs given that a round of chemotherapy costs about $26,000 per patient.
MammaPrint測試的費用約爲3000美元，但鑑於每名患者的一輪化療費用約爲2.6萬美元，該測試可能實現醫療費用的淨減少。
The five-year clinical study of more than 5,000 women found that 94.7 per cent of patients who were categorised as lower-risk by the test survived without their cancer returning and spreading to other parts of the body, about 1.5 per cent lower than those who did receive chemotherapy.
針對逾5000名女性、爲期5年的臨牀研究發現，在被MammaPrint測試認爲復發風險更低的患者中，94.7%的人活了下來，癌症並未復發或者擴散到身體其他部位，相比確實接受過化療的患者低了1.5%。
The MammaPrint test scans biopsies of tumours for 70 genes that govern whether cancerous cells are likely to multiply or invade healthy tissues to determine if there is a high chance of the disease returning even after patients have undergone surgery.
MammaPrint測試對腫瘤的活體組織切片進行掃描，查找掌管癌細胞是否可能會繁殖或入侵健康組織的70種基因，從而判定在患者即便經歷手術之後，癌症復發的可能性是否很高。
The findings come as oncologists try to find treatment plans that are less burdensome, especially for women suffering from breast cancer, who sometimes undergo major surgery such as a double mastectomy even when there is a low risk of their disease recurring.
這一研究結果公佈之時，腫瘤學家們正嘗試尋找負擔更小（尤其是對乳腺癌女患者而言）的治療方案。即使癌症復發的風險很低，這些女患者有時也會進行雙側乳腺切除等大手術。
