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US health experts have sounded the alarm about hundreds of cancer patients dying preventable deaths due to a lethal side effect of chemotherapy treatment, causing them to effectively overdose.
Patients with variants in the DPYD gene have an increased risk of severe toxicity and death from fluoropyrimidine chemotherapy, but many US cancer patients are not being tested for DPYD variants. Fluoropyrimidine chemotherapy kills more than 275,000 US cancer patients each year, but routine genetic testing could change that.
The chemotherapy drug 5-FU can be toxic to some people with cancer. A quick, cheap test can show if chemo is safe for a patient, but few doctors order it.
One January morning in 2021, Carol Rosen took a standard treatment for metastatic breast cancer. Three gruesome weeks later, she died in excruciating pain from the very drug meant to prolong her life. Rosen, a 70-year-old retired schoolteacher, passed her final days in anguish, enduring severe diarrhea and nausea and terrible sores in her mouth
One January morning in 2021, Carol Rosen took a standard treatment for metastatic breast cancer. Three gruesome weeks later, she died in excruciating pain from the very drug meant to prolong her life.