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TORONTO, Oct 09, 2003 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- A Canadian breast cancer study has been halted because a drug being tested has shown striking results in protecting breast cancer survivors from a recurrence.
Researchers told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. women taking the drug letrozole, also known as femara, had half as many recurrences of cancer as women taking a placebo.
The study was halted so women receiving the placebo could start taking the drug.
A University of Toronto cancer expert, Dr. Paul Goss, told the CBC: "We didn't want to imperil the lives of women taking the placebo any further."
The study, which started in 1998, involved 5,000 women in Canada, the United States and several European countries. All the women were post-menopausal and survivors of estrogen dependent breast cancers. They also had to have recently completed a five-year course of tamoxifen, a drug that's been shown to reduce cancer recurrence for about five years.
Goss said the problem is tamoxifen stops working after about five years, and actually can increase the recurrence of cancers and interferes with estrogen while letrozole blocks the hormone's production.
The study's results appear in the online version of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Copyright 2003 by United Press International.
