In the past two days, I’ve taken a deep dive into the world of Twitter and I’m finding it hard to do much except dig through Twitter and look at articles that other people suggest.  And of course, I’ve searched breast cancer and my tweet deck is lined up with a gazillion messages on breast cancer.  In fact, every time one comes through I get a little tweet and can’t help but check.  Yikes.  I need to curb my addiction.  But I’m sure that will come with time–hopefully. 

One of the more interesting articles I’ve come across has to do with a tumor’s likeliness to metastasis (spread).  This is pretty important and critical information because if a tumor has no intention of metastasizing, then, once you take the tumor out, theoretically there’s no need for chemotherapy or radiation . . . and who wouldn’t want to avoid that?  On the flip side, some women with stage I breast cancer may actually need chemotherapy to avoid metastatic disease and this test could help predict that too.

Even more exciting is the possibility of a blood test that could predict metastatic breast cancer before a tumor forms—something that could be very useful to people with a strong family history of breast cancer.  If you want more of the technical details behind this news, check out this article. 

If you find any new and exciting research in the area of breast cancer, be sure to share it with me by posting a comment.  And more importantly if you have any suggestions on how to avoid getting sucked into your tweet deck, let me know that too.