A common chemotherapy drug may be a killer – and is even killing patients who were free of cancer, and who may have had many years of life ahead of them, oncologists fear.
Many cancer patients are hypersensitive to the chemotherapy drug Cremophor-based paclitaxel, and some fatally so. Around 287 cases of hypersensitivity, and 109 deaths, have been reported, but as just 1 per cent of reactions are ever recorded, the true picture is far worse.
Cremophor is a chemical solvent, and experts suspect that people are reacting to it.
Two of the fatalities were women who had been successfully treated for early-stage breast cancer, and had been given the chemotherapy to stop the cancer returning.
(Source: 45th annual meeting, American Society of Clinical Oncology).
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