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WEDNESDAY, Feb. 7 (HealthDay News)-- Compounds called growth factors, given to help cancer patients better tolerate chemotherapy and reduce infection, may actually boost their risk for leukemia or a bone marrow disorder later on, new research suggests.
Even so, the researchers said the findings are not cause for alarm.
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"This should not dissuade people from getting growth factors or chemo if their doctors think they need it," stressed oncologist Dr. Dawn Hershman, an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center, in New York City.
The study is published in the Feb. 7 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
While the use of growth factors in the study doubled patients' risk of getting acute myelocytic leukemia (AML) or a bone marrow disorder called myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), Hershman emphasized that the absolute risk was already "very low."
Her team evaluated 5,510 breast cancer patients using a Medicare population-based database of women aged 65 years or older. The women were treated with chemo between 1991 and 1999.
Some women also received a growth factor therapy. Of the total, 906 women received either granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) or granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), or both. The other patients received chemotherapy alone.
In the 48 months after their breast cancer diagnosis, about 1 percent of the women who had chemo alone developed either AML or MDS, while almost 2 percent of those who got chemo and a growth factor treatment did.
Hershman's group decided to focus on growth factors -- which are being used more and more to help patients better tolerate chemotherapy -- because there has been concern among medical experts that the drugs may aid the survival of cells that have been dangerously mutated by chemotherapy.
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