Women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer who have negative lymph nodes can take advantage of a test known as OncotypeDX. This test is used to estimate the risk of cancer recurrence in women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer. Results presented at the 2007 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology said that the test results changed the oncologist's treatment decisions in about 31 percent of cases.

The test is useful in determining which patients are likely to benefit from chemotherapy in addition to hormonal therapy. It can predict the risk of a patient experiencing a recurrence up to ten years following diagnosis. The patient receives a Recurrence Score that ranges from 0 to 100, the higher the score -- the greater risk of recurrence.

This a great way for oncologists to be able to give individualized treatment -- instead of one size fits all. It's important to get chemotherapy if needed but physicians don't want to over-treat and have the unnecessary risk of side effects from chemotherapy treatment if it's not warranted.

Oncotype DX is a diagnostic test that quantifies the likelihood of disease recurrence in women with early stage, node negative breast cancer. With the information provided by the test it may be possible for doctors and patients to make more informed decisions about breast cancer treatment options.

Oncotype DX analyzes a specific set of genes within a tumor to determine a recurrence score. The recurrence score is a number between 0 and 100 that corresponds to the likelihood that a recurrence with happen within 10 years of initial diagnosis.

Results presented at the 2006 annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) stated that the Oncotype DX test can more accurately predict estrogen receptor (ER) status than the two other commonly used tests, immunohistochemistry and ligand binding.

Another Oncotype DX study presented at the SABCS said that the test could predict the response to Tamoxifen by the levels of estrogen expression.

The researchers concluded that ER and PR expression, as measured using the Oncotype DX test, provide different pieces of information about prognosis and likely response to Tamoxifen among patients with node-negative breast cancer.

If we made no further progress in breast cancer research from this day on, the number of women dying from breast cancer five years from now would still drop substantially because we've progressed so much over the past few years, says MD Eric Winer in the October 2006 issue of Oprah magazine. Winer, director of the Breast Oncology Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is right. There has been a lot of progress. Breast cancer research is on a roll. And here are seven reasons why.

I clearly remember reading a pamphlet about a test that might determine with pretty good accuracy whether or not I would benefit from chemotherapy for breast cancer. This was more than a year ago and I hoped, prayed, wished upon a star that I would be a candidate for this test -- and that the result would reveal that I did not need the toxic chemotherapy that I feared with every fiber of my being. But I did not qualify for this test because it's only effective for tumors that are estrogen receptor positive -- and I am negative. So I received chemotherapy and while I've survived it, there still remains an important issue -- did I need it?