| November 24, 2008 Research: Some breast cancers spontaneously disappear
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(NECN/ABC) - Scientists have learned a great deal about breast cancer in the last few decades, but the disease still holds some surprises. New research finds that some cases of breast cancer may spontaneously disappear, or regress, and potentially may never need treatment. But with no current way to tell which breast cancers might regress, doctors say it is still safest to treat them all.
Doctors from Norway have made an intriguing finding about breast cancer: according to their research, it's possible that some breast tumors may spontaneously regress and disappear.
The researchers studied Norwegian women ages 50 to 64 who had mammograms every 2 years as part of a national breast cancer screening program.
They compared them to similar women not receiving regular mammograms and discovered that - in every age group - women who had the mammograms were more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancers.
Overall, breast cancer rates were about 22 per cent higher among women who had multiple mammograms.
Since the women were similar in all ways, the authors conclude that the mammograms were detecting some breast cancers that would regress and disappear - as probably happened in the non mammogram group.
Indeed, they point to rare but documented cases in the medical literature where women had their tumors spontaneously vanish.
Experts say we may never know for sure what the truth is behind these tumors: to prove that breast cancers can disappear,
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