Has anyone taken Herceptin for less than a year?

Any chance you could find me the link to the study, they aso do that in New Zealand and I am really curious to know why.  If Hercptin can work for 9 weeks rather than a year, I would sure prefer that to a heart condition.  Thanks So much in advance!

Thanks Jackie, I tried the link but it won't paste properly and I'm to tired right now to type it in but I will later.  I also want to know more aabout the 9 week study and doing Herceptin sequentially, not concurrently with chemo and what kind of difference it makes if any boy my doc already has a problem with me but he is going to be really sick of me after this conversation.  Good luck with your onc as well.  Hugs Pearl

My oncologist said that they usually do Herceptin for 16 weeks in Europe and that still seems to have most of the benefits but I haven't seen a formal study. She has me on it for 1 year but says that if we have to stop early (due to heart problems or whatever) that I shouldn't worry - I probably have most of the benefit by that time.

I think if there was a completed study she would have used the shorter time or at least offered me the information to decide.

There was one study, NCCTG N9831, where they did three arms - no H, H starting with chemo and H after chemo and in that study there was an advantage to Herceptin with chemo. In that study the disease free survivial for H after AC-T wasn't much better than AC-T up to 4 years after. And the AC-TH (with H continuing for a year) was better. It looks like it goes form 80% to 90% disease free survival.

But there is another study, HERA, where H was given in sequence with any chemo and that showed a similar increase in disease free survival as the AC-TH arm of NCCTG N9831. I haven't seen any explanation of the difference.

I think the HERA  trial had one branch where they gave H. for a year and another where they gave it for 2 years.  I read somewhere recently that the results of the 2 year model are due late 2008/early 2009.  So in the next few months....  I am looking forward to reading some new stats on Herceptin.  I'm tired of reading all the outdated stuff about HER 2+ tumors being "aggressive with a poor prognosis."  I cannot tell you how terrified I was last year when I was first diagnosed and kept reading that!