The Journal of Bucharest College of Physicians and the Romanian Academy of Medical Sciences

Andreea Parosanu

Andreea Parosanu

News in Cancer-Related Pain Management

Introduction: Cancer related- pain causes a negative psychosocial and physical impact on patients’ lives. The purpose of this review was to investigate the current strategies for cancer pain treatment. Material and Methods: We conducted a PubMed search of the literature published from 2018 to 2020, and details were extracted from the articles with adequate study quality. Discussion: Of 63 titles, 19 studies were selected and used in review. Conclusions: This review article focuses on the novel treatments available for cancer pain management.

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The Role of Multigene Assays in Adjuvant Treatment Decision for Early-Stage Breast Cancer

Multigene assays were developed to guide treatment in early-stage breast cancer and to evaluate the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy. Patients with invasive breast carcinoma, either T1 or T2, N0 or N1 (one to three positive lymph nodes), with no invaded surgical margins (R0), positive for hormone receptors and negative for Her2 receptor derive benefit from these tests. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) validated the use of the following tests: OncotypeDX (a 21 gene test), Mammaprint (70 ARN messenger genes), Predictor Analysis of Microarray 50-PAM50 (50 genes) also known as Prosigna and Endopredict (12 genes). These gene expression signatures have been increasingly used to evaluate the prognosis (such as Endopredict- that can predict outcomes more accurately than ki67 values in early-stage breast cancer) or the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy (such as Oncotype DX). For the moment only two assays, the 70-gene signature (MammaPrint) and the 21-gene Recurrence Score (RS) assay (Oncotype DX), are supported by prospective randomized phase 3 trials. However, all multigene assays are important tools in the identification of low-risk, breast cancer patients, for whom chemotherapy could be avoided.

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