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Lung cancer pill cuts risk of death by half

theguardian.com

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Re: Lung cancer pill cuts risk of death by half

#111

Post by grecy »

fendy3002 wrote: post #46
grecy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The really crappy part of lung cancer is that it's very uncommon to detect it because there aren't really any symptoms to speak of. Eventually it will metastasize so some other part of the body and THAT will give symptoms. When my Mum was diagnosed the Dr. said the bad news is you have cancer in the bones in your neck. The really bad news is that it started in your lungs, and it's way, way to far along to do anything…

same here, my mother had cancer in spine when diagnosed, and it came from lung. Already late stage and metastasize. No symptom until it reached the spine and causing occasional pain and lately inability to move her legs. Died on less than 2 months after that. It sucks.

I'm really sorry to hear that.

My Mum was told that people with her diagnosis survive on average one year. She fought hard through radiation and years of chemo, and made it just less than three years after the diagnosis. Through most of it she was waking me up at 6am to go for a sunrise walk on the beach. I hope I can be that strong one day.

Re: Lung cancer pill cuts risk of death by half

#112

Post by qwytw »

fulafel wrote: post #110
qwytw wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other ways to consume nicotine which are much less harmful.

Same for lots of dependence causing substances, effects are greatly varied by delivery mechanism. Eg heroin pills used to be quite common over the counter and weren't considered a hard drug.

Vaping should be about as efficient if not more than smoking? Probably not something we should encourage but still way safer than inhaling smoke.

Re: Lung cancer pill cuts risk of death by half

#113

Post by breck »

haldujai wrote: post #86
breck wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could be wrong. Absolutely. I am always open to more information. However, I'm usually not wrong about these things. This pattern is so common in big pharma it's an easy bet right now. Based upon the limited information released I would bet: 1) it has high odds of being very lucrative for a small number of people 2) it will be a net negative for patients^ ^ Patients would be better off with more money and using an…

> I could be wrong. Absolutely. I am always open to more information. You're still a bit too cynical but there are some nuggets of truth in what you're saying. With regards to mutation testing: I'm not sure where this Hopkins guy is getting his data from but mutation testing for lung cancer is already standard of care, it's been part of the NCCN guidelines for > 5 years at least. EGFR is not the only driver mutation…

Solid response. Thank you for taking the time and providing the additional information.

Re: Lung cancer pill cuts risk of death by half

#114

Post by evandijk70 »

ulfw wrote: post #2

Can someone explain the numbers to me? "After five years, 88% of patients who took the daily pill after the removal of their tumour were still alive, compared with 78% of patients treated with a placebo. Overall, there was a 51% lower risk of death for those who received osimertinib compared with those who received placebo." So 88% instead of 78% without the pill were still alive five years on. I assume that is the m…

Based on the abstract of the article https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2304594?query=fe...,

I actually think the other explanations are wrong. They are probably reporting the Hazard Ratio, which is more often used as primary outcome for efficacy of drug than 5 year survival. (See for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_ratio)

The hazard ratio, under some assumptions, tries to estimate the relative risk of dying per unit of time. The benefit of this measure is that there is not some artificial cutoff (the difference between a death at 4 years and 364 days and 5 years and 1 day is neglible).

Re: Lung cancer pill cuts risk of death by half

#115

Post by miramba »

haldujai wrote: post #104
miramba wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They all literally share the same DNA, they can't be that different. They share the same DNA in the sense that every cell in that body does. But the different types of cancers have different mutations per cell type and the increasingly precise identification of those is the basis of the recent new treatment options. Histological classifications become less and less relevant, instead mutations and subtypes of mutati…

> Histological classifications become less and less relevant What do you mean by "histological classification" because every interpretation I can think of is very incorrect.

I meant that every cancer diagnosis is done by a pathologist who describes the looks of the cell/tissue and is trained to assign a cancer classification to it. This is currently changing to genetic testing where the underlying mutation (that is causing the tissue changes) is identified. AFAIK the tissue classification is still the gold standard for most cancer types, but I am positive that this will be completely replaced by the new methods. Medicine will not put the cells under a microscope anymore but into a DNA analyzer instead.

Re: Lung cancer pill cuts risk of death by half

#116

Post by haldujai »

miramba wrote: post #115
haldujai wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Histological classifications become less and less relevant What do you mean by "histological classification" because every interpretation I can think of is very incorrect.

I meant that every cancer diagnosis is done by a pathologist who describes the looks of the cell/tissue and is trained to assign a cancer classification to it. This is currently changing to genetic testing where the underlying mutation (that is causing the tissue changes) is identified. AFAIK the tissue classification is still the gold standard for most cancer types, but I am positive that this will be completely rep…

That's incorrect.

If you mean diagnosing the type of cancer (e.g. clear cell renal cell carcinoma) we've already been using molecular markers for over a decade now.

Since you mention "describing the look": mitotic rate and local staging (depth of invasion, lymphovascular invasion, perineurial invasion) matter far more than any DNA/type of cancer and this isn't changing at all nor will it ever change.

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