Breast Cancer: Arimidex Getting Good Results Long Term

About 75 per cent of breast cancers diagnosed are in postmenopausal women, and 8 in 10 are of the hormone receptor positive type.

A new study just released is showing great promise because it suggests that in clinical trails the benefits of anastrazole (Arimidex) lasted longer than the benefits of tamoxifen after treatment is finished.

Arimidex, from AstraZeneca, is an aromatose inhibitor used to treat breast cancer in postmenopausal women with hormone sensitive breast cancer.  Aromatose inhibitors reduce the amount of estrogen which send signals to breast cancer cells to grow.

The trial compared the effects of Arimidex, tamoxifen, or both, given for 5 years, on the recurrence and survival in postmenopausal women with hormone-sensitive, operable, early breast cancer. Altogether the trial recruited over 9,300 women from 21 countries who were randomly assigned to each of the three treatment groups.

A number of studies have been published at various stages of the ATAC trial, but this is the first to show ATAC results at 100 months of follow up, and, according to the authors, it "is the longest follow-up to date after 5 years of upfront treatment with aromatase inhibitors".

The results of these, and other studies, led to aromatose inhibitors being recommended for adjuvant therapy for postmenopausal women with hormone receptor positive early breast cancer.

But, the jigsaw was not complete. The missing piece was whether the benefits and lesser side effects of e remained long after treatment was finished.

In this study the authors report, that after nearly 4 years of follow up, the disease free survival reported in the earlier studies was maintained after treatment was finished. The mean age of the participants at this point was 72 years.

Also, the time to recurrence differences between the anastrazole and tamoxifen groups increased over time (from 2.8 per cent after 5 years to 4.8 per cent after 9 years), and recurrence rates after treatment had finished stayed significantly lower in the anastrazole group.

The researchers also found no significant differences in the risk of disease or death from cardiovascular causes between the treatment groups.

They concluded that:

"The findings of this report extend the previously reported superior efficacy of anastrozole over tamoxifen at 68 months of follow-up to 100 months. We also show a carryover benefit for recurrence in the hormone-receptor-positive population which is larger than that previously shown for tamoxifen."

Just thought you gals ought to have this kind of information.  Pass it on.  Who knows you could be responsible for saving a life.

Comments

[Meg Wolff]

There are other ways that we can decrease out estrogen overload as well. A plant-based diet (one based on organic whole grains, vegetables & beans) will naturally decrease levels of estrogens by not exposing us to hormones that mimic estrogens (called xenoestrogens). They are chemicals such as DDT, PCB's, Dioxin and many more that are found in animal protein ... beef, chicken, cheese, including dairy. They concentrate in the fat of these foods. These "estrogens" are also implicated in causing breast cells to grow.