February 25, 2010

Genetic testing may yield personalized health treatments

By Kelley Luckstein

Heart disease patient Terence Gooding and breast cancer survivor Kathy Negro live 2,000 miles apart, but they stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the burgeoning field of personalized medicine…

 

They are among a small but growing number of American patients who have sought genetic testing to help guide their treatment…

 

By pooling results from various studies, Mayo Clinic breast cancer researcher Matthew Goetz hoped to settle the debate about whether CYP2D6 status affects tamoxifen users' recurrence risk. Goetz's own study had seemed to answer that question. In December 2008, he reported at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium that tamoxifen users who didn't have any fully working copies of the gene were nearly four times as likely to have an early recurrence as those with two copies.

 

USA Today by Rita Rubin, 2/24/2010

Tags: Cancer, Dr. Goetz, tamoxifen

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