Chances improve for child cancer patients

By KATHERINE HOBY and REUTERS

Survival rates of children with cancer are better than before and most youngsters with the illness live to be healthy adults, say cancer experts.

Ninety per cent of children who are successfully treated survive into adulthood, thanks to advances in chemotherapy drugs, which are now more effective and less toxic, and to a better understanding of how to treat the disease.

"The dramatic improvements in survival have come about only in the past few decades," says Professor Vaskar Saha, a child oncologist at the British charity Imperial Cancer Research Fund.

"In the 1980s, about 50 per cent of children were cured of leukaemia but today we are saying about 80 per cent of these children can be cured."

Dr Wayne Nicholls, paediatric oncologist at the Starship children's hospital in Auckland, agrees.

"There has been a steady improvement in child cancer survival rates," he says.

"We are doing better with some (leukaemia, kidney and liver tumours) and not so well with others (neuroblastoma, malignant brain tumours), but overall we are doing better."

Leukaemia is the most common childhood cancer, accounting for nearly one-third of all cases in Britain and New Zealand.

"Basically what happens in New Zealand mirrors what happens in Britain or America," says Dr Nicholls.

Professor Saha says children with cancer are not only surviving longer but are enjoying a better quality of life with fewer side-effects from chemotherapy.

Dr Nicholls says: "It may not be that there are fewer side-effects but for the most part it is that we are learning how to use drugs in smarter ways, and are more aware of side-effects now.

"It is a lot to do with the increase of understanding."

He says NZ's results will tend to follow those from overseas, as we get drugs and treatments from the United States, Europe and Australia.

"There's certainly nothing to suggest we're doing worse than anyone else," he says.

"Conventional therapy has made the difference between not being able to cure children in the past and being able to cure them now.

"The population should be reassured they are getting highly professional and appropriate threrapy."

Professor Saha says part of the success in childhood cancers is due to children's ability to tolerate aggressive drug treatments better than adults.

Earlier treatments sometimes caused secondary tumours or heart disease later in life.

But with improvements in drug therapies many of the dangerous side-effects have been eliminated.

Professor Saha says the human genome project, in which all the genes that make up humans have been mapped, will lead to further advances and the development of targeted therapies that attack only cancerous cells, leaving healthy cells intact.

By using sensitivity profiles of each child and matching them to the most suitable drugs, doctors hope to make future treatments more effective.

"We hope to identify which child will require the normal treatment and which child will require aggressive treatment," says Professor Saha.

"The Holy Grail of chemotherapy is to design a molecule that kills only leukaemia cells."

nzherald.co.nz/health