Breast cancer patients who are overweight or obese might benefit less from treatment with docetaxel, a common chemotherapy drug, than lean patients. An international team of researchers based this conclusion on a retrospective analysis of data from a large clinical trial. Their study was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
In most European countries, more than 50% of women are overweight or obese (with a body mass index (BMI) above 25 kg/m2, as defined by the WHO). In the United States this is the case for over 63% of women and this proportion is expected to further increase in the coming years. It is not widely known, but obese women have a higher risk of getting breast cancer and obese breast cancer patients have a higher risk of relapsing. ...
