Your Urine Could Warn That Your Breast Cancer Has Spread
Breast cancer diagnostic tools are quite limited relying mainly on mammograms and biopsies, but finally there may be another tool that can be used at least in the diagnosing of spreading breast cancer.
According to Reuters it seems that a simple urine test can diagnosis the spread of the msot aggressive tyeps of breast cancer. These are the breast cancers with the Lipocalin 2 gene responsible for helping breast cancer spread throughout the body and changing the outcome a great deal.
Lipocalin 2 is associated with the estrogen receptor which helps to spread tumors throughout the body. So it’s with great excitement that the discovery has been made that a simple urine test can pick up on this.
The estrogen negative tumors are the mose difficult to treat. Tamoxifin has been used for years and now therei s a new family of drugs called aromatase inhibitors that are used to treat other forms of breast cancer but have very little effect on the estrogen negative tumors. So without adquate treatment for this type of breast cancer it is imperative to catch spreading early.
Up until now there really was not any good tools to do that. Invasive breast cancer ic complex and the lack of drugs that will attack this type of breast cancer leaves oncologists happy to see any new tools that can help them diagnose it faster.
Testing took women that were breast cancer free and women with metastatic breast cancer and then measured their lipocalin 2. In women that had metastatic breast cancer the levels were significantly higher. This new simple test is going to get a great deal of use!
