High doses of cancer treatments are used

Doubts over a type of cancer treatment involved in a research scandal have been blown away by new trial results.

Doctors had been using "high-dose" chemotherapy to help breast cancer patients for some time.

Their faith in the treatment was based mainly on research carried out in South Africa, but in 2001, these trials were found to have been faked.

This left scientists with no firm evidence that high-dose treatments actually worked.

However, a new study conducted in the UK is beginning to repair its image.

Researchers found that high-dose therapy was far more effective than traditional chemotherapy at treating a type of cancer called multiple myeloma.

This kind of cancer, which affects approximately 3,500 people in the UK each year, is notoriously difficult to treat.

Survival rates over five years are just one in five people.

The high-dose treatment produced a "complete response" in almost half the patients, compared with less than 10% of patients on standard chemotherapy.

Lead researcher Professor Peter Selby, from St James' Hospital in Leeds, said: "This treatment certainly has a controversial past, especially for treating breast cancer patients.

"However, our large-scale study proves that it is effective for patients with multiple myeloma."

The study was part-funded by Cancer Research UK, the Leukaemia Research Fund and Medical Research Council.

Reputation restored

Cancer Research UK's director general Sir Paul Nurse said: "It's vital we conduct trials of this scale to find out whether one treatment is better than another.

"The reputation of this kind of treatment has been damaged by its controversial past but this study clearly shows a benefit for multiple myeloma patients."

The intensive treatment kills off all the cells that make up the bone marrow of patients.

Bone marrow has to be extracted from the patient prior to treatment, then returned afterwards to restore the immune system.

Fraudulent

The South African research scandal centred around a trial at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Dr Werner Bezwoda claimed that his high-dose chemotherapy prolonged the lives of women with advanced breast cancer.

However, he was found to have compared his treatment with a less effective conventional alternative to make it look better - and consent forms from his patients, who were mostly poor and black, could not be found.

He has since been sacked by the university.