CrazyJogger, CTC counts is a somewhat tricky bu
Post# of 148184
CTC counts is a somewhat tricky business as they are difficult to detect and there are different molecular subtypes.
The link below directs to a massive study including a total of 50 studies with 6712 patients recruited. I believe somebody else posted a link to a very good study on CTC as well. From the abstract:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5364512/
Quote:
Hence, we conducted a meta-analysis of the published researches with measurement of CTCs before and after treatment in BC patients, and estimated the CTC-reducing effect of the current anti-tumor therapies. The CTC-reducing effects by different treatments were investigated separately in subgroup analyses, so were the effects in patients with different molecular subtypes. Then we also analyzed the relationship between reduction of CTCs and disease progression probability as well as survival period. This study followed the PRISMA criterions.
As you can see from this large study, there is no record of 0 CTC detected after any treatment. That is why I commented that this is very difficult to achieve.
A word of caution here, the technology of CTC detection has advanced quite a bit in the last few years. Detecting CTCs is very difficult because, normally, for a cancer patient there are less than 10 cells per ml of blood that need to be separated from millions of white cells. I understand that FDA currently only accepts the CellSearch system.
I am not a physician therefore all of the above imo.