Ten years of hormone breast cancer drugs 'may benefit some'

Conclusion This trial suggests that extending the duration of aromatase inhibitor treatment for postmenopausal women to 10 years, rather than five, may reduce the risk of the cancer recurring or new cancer developing in the other breast. The trial has many strengths, including: a double-blind design, with neither participants nor the research team aware of allocation to treatment or placebo groups – this is regarded as the gold standard of assessing the effect of an intervention; adherence rates to five years were equivalent in both groups (62% in each), suggesting that participants were unaware of treatment  stratified randomisation – this ensured baseline characteristics were balanced between the groups a large sample size and prior power calculation – this ensured the researchers enrolled a sufficient number of people to detect a difference in survival between the groups  However, there are points to bear in mind. There was no difference between groups when including the outcome of overall survival – this was seen only when comparing new or recurrent breast cancer rates. There was also no significant difference between groups when taking into account baseline characteristics. This suggests some women may be better suited to, or would gain more benefit from, prolonged aromatase inhibitor treatment than others. The trial has only looked at disease-free survival up to five years. Though this was better in the treatment group, this is com...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Cancer Medication Source Type: news