A new study reveals that 70 per cent of women diagnosed with a common type of early stage breast cancer can skip chemotherapy in their treatment.
The ground-breaking research was presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago on Sunday.
A decade-long study revealed that women who take a cancer recurrence gene test and yield results of low or intermediate risk of cancer recurrence – which effects more than 85,000 women a year – can forego chemotherapy altogether, according to CNN.
New research reveals that women who score low to intermediate (0 to 25) on a breast cancer recurrence test can be sparred chemotherapy, according to new study shared Sunday

Previously only women who scored between 0 to 10 were exempt The ground-breaking decade-long study was shared American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago on Sunday
‘I’m delighted. I’ve been worried for a long time about unnecessary treatment for cancer, and unnecessary side effects from chemotherapy,’ Dr. Otis Brawley, the chief medical and scientific officer for the American Cancer Society who was not part of the study, said.
‘Now with these genomic tests, we are finding that we have multiple types of breast cancer, perhaps several dozen and we are being able to tailor our therapies to the type of breast cancer every woman has,’ Brawley added.
The results are a part of the largest breast cancer treatment trial ever conducted, according to the Washington Post.
The trail started in 2006 enrolled more than 10,000 women in the US and five other countries diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer and followed their progress through post-surgery treatment.
‘We have been waiting for these results for years. They are going to change treatment and remove uncertainty for women making decisions,’ Allison Kurian, an oncologist at Stanford University who was not involved in the trial said.
The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer to affect women across the globe.

The research will affect more than 85,000 women who fall into the low and intermediate breast cancer recurrence demographic each year
The new research affects women who are estrogen-sensitive, test negative for HER2 and have early stage tumors below five centimeters that have not spread to lymph nodes.
They also have a score between 11 and 25 on the Oncotype DX Breast Recurrence Score test, a test that measures cancer recurrence.
‘What that test does is look at 21 different genes to see if each is turned on or off and then if it is over-expressed or not. So we have two yes-no answers for each gene. It looks at all 21 of those answers and gives that cancer a recurrent score between 0 and 100,’ Brawley said to CNN.
Previously, only women with scores between 0 to 10 could skip chemotherapy.
The new research now exempts women with scores between 11 to 25 from chemotherapy as well, unless they are premenopausal.
The study followed women with intermediate score between 11 to 25 who opted for endocrine (hormone) therapy and others who were treated with endocrine therapy as well as chemotherapy.
After years of follow up, their results were nearly identical with women who received hormone therapy yielding a 93.9 per cent survival rate and those with both therapies a 93.8 per cent survival rate.
‘These findings, showing no benefit from receiving chemotherapy plus hormone therapy for most patients in this intermediate-risk group, will go a long way to support oncologists and patients in decisions about the best course of treatment,’ Dr. Jeffrey Abrams, associate director of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, said in a statement.