New Drug Promising for Advanced Breast Cancer
Published:
5 October 2003 y., Sunday
A drug called exemestane may be a more effective first-line agent than tamoxifen for postmenopausal women with advanced breast cancer, European researchers report.
Tamoxifen works by blocking the effects of estrogen on tumor cells and is the most widely prescribed drug for breast cancer treatment.
Exemestane -- which is a member of a newer class of drugs called aromatase inhibitors -- decreases the overall amount of estrogen in the body. Both tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors only work in patients who have breast tumors that carry hormone receptors, meaning that estrogen fuels the cancer growth.
Exemestane is currently approved for the treatment of advanced breast cancer in postmenopausal women whose tumors no longer respond to tamoxifen.
To see if exemestane would be an effective first-line agent, Dr. Robert Paridaens of the Universitair Ziekenhuis in Leuven, Belgium, and others randomly assigned 120 postmenopausal women with breast cancer that had spread to other areas of the body to daily treatment with exemestane 25 mg or tamoxifen 20 mg.
Independent reviewers, who didn't know which woman had been given what treatment, saw improvement in 41 percent of women treated with exemestane compared to just 17 percent of women treated with tamoxifen.
Šaltinis:
tehrantimes.com
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.
The most popular articles
Today the European Commission adopted proposals to enhance the EU's role in global health.
more »
Across the WHO European Region, 461 645 tuberculosis (TB) cases were reported in 2008, representing about 6% of the TB cases reported to WHO worldwide.
more »
People needing liver transplants or other organ donations should face shorter waiting times after MEPs voted on Tuesday for measures to improve the supply, safety and quality of donated organs.
more »
Do you remember everything the doctor said during your short encounter about the medicine prescribed for you? Probably not.
more »
The European Commission will adopt today a decision confirming the risk areas set up by the Romanian authorities in relation to an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in a backyard poultry farm located in the commune of Letea, in Tulcea county, at the Danube's delta close to the Ukrainian border.
more »
With public healthcare systems under pressure from an ageing population, governments are increasingly looking to information technology to provide relief.
more »
More than ever, children's health is at risk from a changing environment.
more »
Russian men and women face far shorter life expectancies than people in developed countries - as much as 14 years shorter than their neighbors in Europe.
more »
WHO was saddened by the death of Professor Ihsan Dogramaci, who will be remembered for his tireless efforts and accomplishments in public health care. He was the last living signatory of the WHO Constitution, signed in New York in July 1946.
more »
One-legged Nurse Pan Hean is a proud man. So are all the staff of Chakrey Health Center, which Pan Hean heads. The new health center opened three years ago with 10 patients a day coming for consultation.
more »