If you’re diagnosed with breast cancer is the rest of you safe? Or is it more like you have cancer in your body and it started in the breast?
In: Biology
Breast cancer is cells from the breast which have become cancerous. That means that they are growing uncontrollably, forming tumors, and spreading to neighboring tissue. If untreated, breast cancer will spread throughout your body. In that case, you may have tumors in any of your organs, but closer examination would make it clear that those cells originated from your breast. The spread to other organs is called metastasis. If that has occurred, then you’re diagnosed with “metastatic breast cancer.”
We care about where cancers originated because different types of cells will react differently to different treatments. For example, most breast cells need estrogen to grow, so many treatments for breast cancer utilize medications which modulate estrogen to starve the cells. Similarly, prostrate cancer can be treated by blocking the production of testosterone. All of this depends on the circumstances and modern research is getting increasingly granular, with drugs being made for increasingly specific circumstances. That’s way some of the pharmaceutical commercials you see on TV are so specific (“do you have ER positive her2 negative breast cancer? Then this drug may be for you”)
Hope that all made sense and I hope you’re asking out of curiosity and not due to any recent health changes.
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