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Using Femara to Prevent Breast Cancer Recurrence

According to the cancer incidents survey, there are more than 215,000 women have been identified as breast cancer patients annually. For most of them, surgery to eliminate the tumor is only the initial step in the battle against the disease, generally followed by radiation or chemotherapy. Besides, they might need to consider whether to take the adjuvant treatment or not to effectively get rid of the recurrence of breast cancer. I think you would like to read Cancer Research in Malaysia and Things to Know Before Breast Cancer Treatment too.

When a woman's breast cancer does come back or spreads to other parts of the body, she may be at greater risk of dying from the disease. Women whose breast cancer is observed in the nearby lymph nodes at medical diagnosis and people who acquire chemotherapy after surgery are considered to be at increased risk for breast cancer recurrence.

Postmenopausal women whose early-stage breast cancer is hormone-sensitive have a new choice as their first hormone therapy following surgery. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently authorised Femara (letrozole tablets) on December 28, 2005 for this type of use. This approval was based on a median of a couple of years of therapy. The research is still ongoing to determine the long-term safety and efficiency of Femara. Already a leading breast cancer treatment, Femara is actually the only medicine in a group called aromatase inhibitors which is approved to be used both right after surgical procedure and after five years of tamoxifen. The FDA granted Femara a high priority review, a distinction reserved for medications which could possibly offer a significant development when compared to items presently on the market.

A panel from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the country's main group of oncologists, suggests aromatase inhibitors, like Femara, be part of the optimal adjuvant treatment for this category of women.

"One of the greatest worries confronted by ladies who are actually treated for early breast cancer is that their cancer will come back. With Femara, we now have a solution that can help address that fear early on, even in patients who we know face the highest risk of recurrence," said Matthew Ellis, MD, PhD, FRCP, director of the Breast Cancer Program at Washington University in St. Louis.

In a large clinical research of post-surgery breast cancer therapy, scientists compared the potency of Femara and tamoxifen, some other drug prescribed after surgery. An analysis performed after 26 months demonstrated that Femara decreased the risk of breast cancer coming back by 21% over the reduction offered by tamoxifen. Patients taking Femara also showed a 27 % decrease in the risk of the cancer dispersing to distant parts of the body.

In this study, women at elevated risk of recurrence experienced the best benefit from Femara. Femara reduced this risk by twenty nine % in women whose breast cancer had already metastasize to the lymph nodes at the time of diagnosis and by 30 % in women who had prior chemotherapy. The outcomes also showed that in these high-risk women, Femara lessened the potential risk of cancer spreading to distant parts of the body by 33 % and 31 %, respectively.

In this study, Femara was usually well tolerated with the most standard unwanted effects together with hot flashes, joint pain, night sweats, weight gain and nausea.

So, hopefully that Femara could possibly be option for us to counteract the breast cancer recurrence. The secondary cancer may appear far more threatening than the primary cancer.
The 700 Club - December 30, 2011 - CBN.com