Drug boosts long-term survival after breast cancer: study

After a diagnosis of localized breast cancer, women are often prescribed tamoxifen for five years to help prevent a recurrence, but researchers said Saturday another drug, anastrazole, may work better. The federally funded phase III study involved more than 3,100 postmenopausal women with a kind of breast cancer known as ductal carcinoma in situ, which was treated by removing the cancerous lump followed by a radiation regimen. Some women were then randomly assigned to receive tamoxifen and others anastrazole. After 10 years, 93.5 percent of women in the anastrazole group were living breast cancer-free, compared to 89.2 percent in the tamoxifen group, according to the first major study to compare the two treatments, released at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago.

The good news is tamoxifen and anastrazole are both very effective, but it seems that women have better chances of staying well with anastrazole.

lead study author Richard Margolese

The drugs were similarly tolerated by patients with few side effects, though anastrazole tends to speed up osteoporosis and put women at higher risk of bone fracture, while tamoxifen has been associated with higher rates of uterine cancer. The differences in these complications were not statistically significant when the two drugs were compared, researcher said. Both drugs block estrogen – which can fuel the growth of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer – but in different ways.

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