What does Herceptin do to the body?

Herceptin works by blocking the effects of HER2 and encouraging the immune system (the body’s natural defences) to attack and kill the cancer cells.

How bad is Herceptin?

Herceptin may cause inflammation of the lungs, which can be life-threatening. Symptoms include trouble breathing, cough, tiredness, and fluid in the lungs.

What are the long term side effects of Herceptin?

Women treated with Herceptin sometimes have serious side effects, including:

• heart failure.
• high blood pressure.
• joint pain.
• back pain.
• hot flashes.
• headache.
• diarrhea.

What type of cancer is Herceptin used for?

Trastuzumab is a targeted cancer drug and is also known by other names such as Herceptin, Herzuma and Ontruzant. It is a treatment for early and advanced breast cancer, advanced stomach cancer and cancer of where the food pipe joins your stomach (gastro oesophageal junction).

What are the most common side effects of Herceptin?

Side Effects Seen Most Often With HERCEPTIN

• Fever.
• Feeling sick to your stomach (nausea)
• Throwing up (vomiting)
• Infusion reactions.
• Diarrhea.
• Infections.
• Increased cough.
• Headache.

How effective is trastuzumab?

A study of more than 4000 patients, published in 2014, showed that adding trastuzumab to chemotherapy led to a 37\% relative improvement in overall survival, increasing 10-year survival from 75.2\% to 84\%. The 10-year disease-free survival rate increased from 62.2\% to 73.7\%. All patient subgroups benefited.

Does Herceptin damage the heart?

Heart muscle damage and heart failure are potentially serious side effects of Herceptin. A small study has found that after 3 months of Herceptin treatment, nearly 58\% of women had some loss of heart function.

Is trastuzumab toxic?

Although trastuzumab is a valuable therapeutic, its toxicity on the heart remains a major concern. Trastuzumab mediates such toxic effects via various mechanisms and there are several risk factors for its cardiotoxic effects.

Is Herceptin a form of chemo?

Herceptin is an intravenous drug that is part of a chemotherapy regimen that is used to prevent recurrence of breast cancer, and for the treatment breast cancer that has spread beyond the breast (metastasized). It belongs to a class of drugs called monoclonal antibodies.

Is Herceptin a radiation?

The most common side effects seen in treatment of metastatic breast cancer (based on intravenous trastuzumab) are fever, chills, headache, infection, congestive heart failure, insomnia, cough, and rash.

Is trastuzumab a chemo?

Trastuzumab is used to treat metastatic (spread) breast cancer. It is effective against tumors that overexpress the HER2/neu protein. As part of chemotherapy regimen for adjuvant treatment of lymph-node positive, HER2/neu protein positive breast cancer.

Is trastuzumab safe?

Data from intervention trials showed an excellent safety profile for trastuzumab, except for cardiotoxicity. This latter is most commonly associated with an asymptomatic decline in the left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) rather than a congestive heart failure (CHF) [33].