This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
'Personalized' chemotherapy
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
In the Journal of Clinical Oncology last week (online) researchers at Hopkins have determined that certain SNPs in the estrogen receptor may predict for occurrence of hot flashes. Imagine that potential to be able to tell patients with much higher certainty what side effects they are going to experience.
This occurs to me each time I consent a patient for chemotherapy — the vagaries about what side effects are possible, and what are rare but serious. I have started telling my patients that everyone gets some side effects with chemotherapy, but we don't know what patients will get which ones. However, rarely do I feel that a patient "knows" what their side effects will be, or internalizes all the possibilities. Nor am I sure that's a bad thing — if you thought you would get a neutropenic fever and end up in the hospital for a week during chemo, in addition to nausea, vomiting and losing your hair, would you really go through with it?
I think most patients enter into chemotherapy hoping that they are not the one who gets bad side effects. But this research, and the emerging research about KRAS mutations and EGFR therapies make that hope about "personalized" chemotherapy more realistic.