Are Obese Women Getting Short-Changed By Chemotherapy Treatments?

How much chemotherapy does an obese woman need? Typically an obese
woman with breast cancer would receive reduced doses of chemotherapy
as they battle breast cancer. Back in June of 2005, a study published
in the Archives of Internal Medicine concluded that obese women should
receive chemotherapy based on actual weight, and not in reduced
amounts as the standard practice.

And now again a study presented in the August 2005 edition of Lancet
claims that doctors should not reduce chemotherapy doses for obese
women when no receptors for the hormone oestrogen have been found on
the breast cancer cells. This type of cancer is called oestrogen-
receptor negative.

Clinicians often reduce chemotherapy doses for obese patients because
of worries about how the treatment may react with the patient and
affect their overall health.

According to the study's director Marco Colleoni of the European
Institute of Oncology, Italy, and his colleagues, reducing the first
course of chemotherapy for obese patients with oestrogen-receptor
negative breast cancer proves "detrimental".

Colleoni and his team looked at the relation between body-mass index
(BMI), chemotherapy dose reduction, oestrogen receptor expression, and
outcome for pre-menopausal women with breast cancer by examining data
from four randomized trials.

They found that 97 out of 249 obese patients received less than 85% of
protocol specified dose during the first course of chemotherapy
compared with patients with normal and intermediate BMI.

Obese patients with oestrogen-receptor negative disease that received
85% or more of the first protocol specified dose had significantly
better disease-free survival and overall survival than

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