Reducing anxiety and providing reassurance for patients<\/p>\n
The team at Penn is currently enrolling patients in two ongoing<\/a>, large-scale studies<\/a> that could help support their findings. Trial sites are located across the country, including at the University of Pennsylvania<\/a> in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n The ultimate goal, Chodosh said, is to not only identify and treat those who are at a higher risk of recurrence, but to be able to offer reassurance to survivors who don\u2019t have dormant cells.<\/p>\n \u201cThe goal would be to get a test that\u2019s so good that, if you\u2019re negative with this test, you could confidently say your risk of recurring is extremely low over the course of your lifetime,\u201d he said. \u201cThat would have such a big benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n Researchers are also following breast cancer survivors who don\u2019t ever test positive for dormant cancer cells in order to compare their long-term survival outcomes to those who get treated for sleeper cells.<\/p>\n Some clinicians and experts were worried about whether participation in these kinds of trials would cause more distress in survivors, DiMichele said. But her team studied that, too, and found it to be the opposite.<\/p>\n \u201cRegardless of the answer, whether the patient found out they were positive or negative, overall their anxiety went down,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd we think it\u2019s because, and what patients tell us is, \u2018Look, at least I\u2019m doing something.\u2019 It was the not doing something, not knowing, that was so anxiety-provoking.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the years, LaScala has become more involved in research efforts and now serves as a patient advocate on research boards at Penn, where she can help shape studies and participant guidelines.<\/p>\n Among breast cancer survivors, she said there has always been passion and an eagerness for advancing testing<\/a> and treatment options<\/a> for everyone \u2014 survivors, people actively battling disease and those who may one day get a diagnosis.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so energizing,\u201d LaScala said. \u201cTo be around the research and to be able to participate \u2026 it\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reducing anxiety and providing reassurance for patients The team at Penn is currently enrolling patients in two ongoing,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":216933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,6958,6954,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-216932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-cancer-research","10":"tag-cancer-treatment","11":"tag-pa","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115183029216640968","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}