A study has suggested that a number of women who are at early-stage breast cancer can skip chemotherapy without affecting their chances to get rid of the disease. The study has shown that gene-activity test is going to play a major role in identifying a patient’s risk.

During the study, women who were allowed to skip chemotherapy, based on the gene-activity test, had about 1%, or less, chances cancer recurring far away within the next 60 months. Joseph Sparano, Doctor at Sparano of Montefiore Medical Center in New York and lead author of the study, said results of the study were amazing, and there can’t be anything better than that.

Dr. Clifford Hudis from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York said the study was really beneficial and he agreed with the study researchers. Dr. Hudis, an independent expert not involved in the study, said, “There is really no chance that chemotherapy could make that number better. Using the gene test ‘lets us focus our chemotherapy more on the higher risk patients who do benefit’ and spare others the ordeal”.

The National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), sponsored the study whose results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Monday. The study was also discussed in the European Cancer Congress in Vienna.

In the study, most common type of breast cancer was involved by the researchers. Over 100,000 women in the US along are diagnosed with breast cancer every year.

"These patients who had low risk scores by Oncotype did extraordinarily well at five years," said Dr. Hope Rugo, a breast cancer specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, with no role in the study. "There is no chance that for these patients, that chemotherapy would have any benefit."

"I was convinced that there was no indication for chemotherapy. I was thrilled not to have to have it," and has been fine since then, she said.