Breast Cancer Treatment Tablets For Osteoporosis.
The bone cure-all zoledronic acid (Zometa), considered a potentially favourable weapon against breast cancer recurrence, has flopped in a revitalized study involving more than 3360 patients. The drug, long used to vendetta bone loss from osteoporosis, did not appear to prevent breast cancer from returning or to boost disease-free survival overall. British researchers presented the disconcerting findings Thursday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in Texas.
And "As a whole, the swot is negative," study author Dr Robert Coleman, a professor of medical oncology at the University of Sheffield in England, said during a Thursday talk convention on the findings. "There is no overall difference in recurrence rates or survival rates between patients who got the bone pharmaceutical and those who did not , except in older patients, defined as more than five years after menopause".
That was a possible auspicious spot in the results. "In that population, there is a benefit," Coleman said. The older women had a 27 percent recuperation in recurrence and a 29 percent improvement in overall survival over the five-year follow-up, compared to those who didn't get the drug.
And "There was tremendous anticipate that this drug approach would be a major accept forward," Coleman noted. "There have been other trials that suggest this is the case". In one previous study, the use of the poison was linked with a 32 percent improvement in survival and lowered recurrence in younger women with tit cancer. Other research has found that healthy women on bone drugs were less prone to develop breast cancer, so experts were hoping the drugs had an anti-tumor effect.
Zometa, marketed by Novartis AG, is one of a distinction of drugs utilized to treat osteoporosis and also to relieve pain when cancers have spread to the bone - in part, by slowing bone attrition caused by the disease. It is given intravenously, while other bisphosphonates such as Actonel, Fosamax or Boniva can be bewitched orally.