Here comes good news for some early-stage breast cancer patients. In a major Austrian study, it has been found that a drug commonly known to prevent bone loss during breast cancer treatment also substantially cut the risk of breast cancer recurrence in people with early breast cancer.
The study, reported Saturday at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago, suggests that Novartis AG's bone-strengthening drug Zometa might also cut the risk of disease recurrence in premenopausal breast cancer patients.
Made by Basel, Switzerland- based Novartis, Zometa (zoledronic acid) is a drug originally approved by the FDA to treat bone loss in patients undergoing chemotherapy and to reduce bone fractures in osteoporosis patients. Novartis sells Zometa in more than 80 countries and helped sponsor the study along with British-based AstraZeneca PLC, which makes Arimidex, the brand name of anastrozole.
To reach their findings, a team of Austrian researchers, led by Dr. Michael Gnant of the Medical University of Vienna, studied 1,800 premenopausal women taking hormone treatments for early-stage breast cancer.
After five years, the researchers found that women who took Zometa along with the hormone therapy had a 36 percent lower risk of the cancer spreading to the bone compared to those who had hormone therapy alone.
"We found not only an effect on bone metastases, which one might have anticipated, but also on local regional recurrence, distant bone metastases and contralateral breast cancer," said Dr. Gnant. "The indication is that zoledronic acid exerts a benefit through a variety of mechanisms which, all together, create a tumor-hostile environment..."
If Zometais found to be useful in a second ongoing study, doctors hope that it will quickly be tested against other cancers that tend to spread, or metastasize, to bones, such as prostate and kidney cancer. The second study is testing the drug in 3,360 pre- and postmenopausal women with cancer that has spread but not extensively.
The overall outcome of patients in the first major study was excellent, and "This is reassuring that patients with endocrine [hormone]-response disease, even in premenopause, can be safely treated with adjuvant chemotherapy. The benefit was seen in and outside the bone," Gnant said.
Breast cancer is the most common tumor in women. It is the second leading cause of cancer death in women, first being the lung cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, more than 180,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States every year and almost 41,000 die because of it.
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