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Breast Cancer Drug Risky for Heart A cardiologist says a new drug used to treat an aggressive form of breast cancer carries a high risk of causing heart failure. In an editorial in the July 18 issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, Dr. Arthur Feldman, director of the cardiovascular institute at the University of Pittsburgh says 7 percent of the women treated with Herceptin alone developed heart failure, according to his analysis. Women who took Herceptin with the chemotherapy drugs anthracycline and cyclophosphamide showed a 28 percent incidence of heart failure. But a leading scientist and physician at Genetech Inc., the company that developed Herceptin, says Dr. Feldman's analysis is flawed. Dr. Robert Mass points to clinical studies that show Herceptin increased the survival chances of a woman with metastatic breast cancer by 25 percent. Dr. Mass also says Dr. Feldman never contacted Genetech to ask questions about Herceptin. Dr. Mass says in clinical trials involving 1,200 patients, only 9 percent developed heart failure. However, 90 percent of the breast cancer patients in these trials died of their cancer, according to Dr. Mass. He adds that the chemotherapy drug anthracycline has been known to be toxic to the heart and Herceptin is now used only in combination with the drug taxol. The Herceptin-taxol combination carries an 11 percent risk of possible toxicity to the heart, Dr. Mass says. Dr. Feldman points out in his editorial that heart failure kills more women than breast cancer, yet breast cancer gets much more attention from the pharmaceutical industry. Herceptin was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year. --By Katrina Woznicki |
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