A new
drug may give post-menapausal women with advanced breast cancer a treatment
option that
may be as effective as tamoxifen but with fewer side-effects.
The drug fadrazole was recently tested in a Phase III clinical trial sponsored
by the Swiss Group for Clinical Cancer Research. The study involved 212 women
who had volunteered for the trial. All were post-menapausal with advanced breast
cancer. Half the patients were given tamoxifen, the standard first-line hormonal
therapy, and half fadrazole.
The study found that the overall survival
between the two groups were similar. The fadrozole group, however, appeared to
tolerate the drug better than the tamoxifen group. The "clinically
relevant toxic side-effects" recorded were 13% for the fadrozole group, versus
27% for the tamoxifen group. Severe cardiovascular effects were seen only in the
tamoxifen group (in 3 patients). Patients in each group were switched to the
other drug if their initial drug treatment stopped working. This crossover led
to response or stable disease in 64% of the patients. The study concludes that
fadrozole may be an appropriate alternative to tamoxifen,
especially for
patients predisposed to thromboembolic events (obstructions caused by blood
clots).
