Posted in the Washington Post.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007; 12:59 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health officials approved a genetic test on Tuesday that can provide women with early breast cancer an estimate of whether the disease is likely to return in five to 10 years.
Officials cautioned, however, that the test was not perfect and should be used with other information to help doctors and patients decide on treatment.
Called MammaPrint and made by Dutch company Agendia, the test is the first with U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval that relies on a complicated computer analysis of several genes. Cancer recurrence depends partly on the activation and suppression of certain genes in a tumor.
The MammaPrint measures the activity of 70 genes using a sample from a breast cancer tumor that has been removed. Women will be told if they have a high or low risk of their disease returning in five to 10 years.
