Chemotherapy uses powerful drugs to stop cancer cells from growing
Catherine, Princess of Wales, announced on Friday that she is receiving preventive chemotherapy to treat cancer discovered after abdominal surgery.
While the specifics are hard to pin down because the 42-year-old princess didn’t reveal the nature of her cancer, here’s an explanation for the preventive chemotherapy.
– What is chemotherapy? –
Chemotherapy uses powerful drugs to stop cancer cells from growing, dividing and producing more cells. There are many types of chemotherapy, depending on the cancer, how far it has spread, and the treatment plan.
Because these treatments cannot differentiate between different cells, they end up killing some beneficial cells, such as white blood cells, causing some side effects.
– Why prevention? –
Kimmie Ng, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the United States, told AFP that preventive chemotherapy is often used after surgery to “reduce the chance of the cancer coming back.”
Lawrence Young, professor of molecular oncology at the University of Warwick, said that even if the surgery is successful, “tiny cancer cells may still be lurking in the body and cannot be detected by current tests”.
Andrew Beggs, a cancer surgeon at the University of Birmingham, told the Science Media Center it was “a bit like spilling some bleach on the floor and then mopping it with bleach”.
– side effect? –
The effects of chemotherapy on people vary depending on the specific cancer, treatment method and individual.
But common side effects include fatigue, nausea, diarrhea, loss of appetite and an increased risk of infection.
Some of the rarer and more serious side effects include sepsis and damage to vital organs.
– how long? –
Treatment regimens can also vary widely, but a traditional chemotherapy regimen will be given in four to six blocks, said Bob Phillips, a professor of pediatric oncology at York University.
A cycle may last 21 days, “including one or several days of chemotherapy and then time for the body to recover from that,” Phillips said.
Preventive chemotherapy regimens tend to last three to six months.
It may take weeks or months for people to recover from treatment.
– Are cancer rates higher among young people? –
Beggs emphasized that “cancers that develop at a young age are by no means uncommon.”
“I run a clinic for early-onset cancers in adults and we are seeing more and more people in their 40s with cancer,” he said.
Shivan Sivakumar, an oncology expert at the University of Birmingham, said there was a “current epidemic” of cancer among under-50s.
“It’s not clear why, but we are seeing more and more patients developing abdominal cancer,” he said.
Ng noted that research released this year by the American Cancer Society showed that young adults were the only age group to experience an increase in cancer between 1995 and 2020.
“There is an urgent need to study the reasons for this rise,” Wu said.
Research published last week in the journal BMJ showed that cancer cases among people aged 35 to 69 in the UK have also increased over the past 25 years.
But cancer deaths have dropped significantly.
“The younger you are, the more likely you are to tolerate chemotherapy well,” Sivakumar said.
Younger people are also more likely to develop cancer.
A combination of early diagnosis and better treatment has allowed “survival rates to double in the last 50 years,” Young said.
He added: “The incidental discovery of cancer during surgery for other diseases is often associated with early detection of the tumor, when subsequent chemotherapy is more effective.”
– Self-check? –
Cancer Research UK chief executive Michelle Mitchell said such high-profile cancers could remind people to think about their health.
“If people find something is not normal for them or won’t go away, they should talk to their GP,” she said.
“It probably won’t be cancer. But if it is, catching it early means treatment is more likely to be successful.”
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
