Morphine may hurt treatment of breast cancer

Breast cancer researchers have appealed for funding to allow them fully probe their discovery that common pain relief and anaesthesia techniques could hamper patients’ treatment.

The research team from University College Dublin found in laboratory tests that inhaled anaesthetic gas with morphine used in surgery could actually help potentially lethal breast cancer cells to survive.

Their studies used blood samples and extracted cells from patients who underwent surgery for breast cancer rather than direct tests on patients themselves, but they say it’s now crucial to move their research out of the lab and into a full-scale, clinical trial.