Science / Medicine : Treatment Effective Against Breast Cancer

The combined results of 61 studies involving nearly 29,000 women establish “beyond reasonable doubt” that drug and hormone treatment after surgery can save the lives of many victims of early breast cancer, researchers say.

The analysis shows that during the five years after treatment begins, a synthetic hormone called tamoxifen reduces the odds of death among older women by about one-fifth. For women under age 50, a combination of chemotherapy drugs reduces the odds by about one-quarter.

Dr. I. Craig Henderson of the Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston, one of 79 co-authors of the report last week’s New England Journal of Medicine, said that the treatments do not necessarily cure these women but “substantially delay death.”

National Institutes of Health recommended in 1985 that tamoxifen and chemotherapy be used for breast cancer that has spread to the lymph nodes. In May, 1988, the National Cancer Institute told doctors that this treatment could be extended to women in the earliest stages of breast cancer that is not yet evident in the lymph nodes. The institute based its recommendation on three unpublished studies showing that cancer was slower to return when these women were treated after surgery.