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Is breast cancer one that has a lengthy pre- clinical period (slow growing tumours)?

I can't seem to find out much about this.
Any help would be appreciated!
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Original post by Rxmxi
I can't seem to find out much about this.
Any help would be appreciated!


It depends entirely on the histology, there are many different types of breast cancer, lobular, ductal etc.
Also, it depends on where their growth signals come from (estrogen, progesterone, HER-2).

You probably need to refine your search to a particular histological subgroup of breast cancer.
I mean,if you're talking literally from an individual cell picking up the very first mutation then all cancers are necessarily going to have a very lengthy pre-clinical period. But that's a very different question to when a tumour may be realistically detectable by current methods, and that is different to when a tumour is realistically detectable as part of a screening program. And then as mentioned, cancer is becoming increasingly broken down using molecular markers and some are faster growing that others.

Of course the breast cancer screening program is still controversial and some authors think it is ineffective.

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