Fertility hope for younger women with breast cancer

At the risk of repeating myself ad infinitum on the subject, regular readers will know of my distress over the effect of chemotherapy on my fertility as a young woman with cancer, and of the tough time I had making the decision to have adjuvant chemotherapy.  Infertility is a devasting side-effect in young patients having cancer treatment because of the sensitivity of a woman’s eggs to the anti-cancer drugs.

With all this in mind it is great to read about a  major breakthrough by scientists which could bring new hope for women who face the heartbreak of losing their fertility after toxic cancer treatment.  Researchers at the University of Rome have found the way chemotherapy stops fertility and have also discovered a potential way to prevent the damage being done by using a well-known drug, imatinib.  You can read more on this discovery here.

It is important to point out that the research is still at an experimental stage and has not been tried successfully on any patient to date, but it is reassuring to know that, with breast cancer being diagnosed at an early stage in more younger women,  strategies to allow them  to preserve their fertility are now also being researched and developed.

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