Many women with early-stage breast cancer can skip chemotherapy without hurting their odds of beating the disease - good news from a major study that shows the value of a gene-activity test to gauge each patient's risk.
The test accurately identified a group of women whose cancers are so likely to respond to hormone-blocking drugs that adding chemo would do little if any good while exposing them to side effects and other health risks. In the study, women who skipped chemo based on the test had less than a 1 percent chance of cancer recurring far away . . .
