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According to
a new study, young women with breast cancer may reduce
their chances of developing the disease again with a drug based on a derivative of vitamin
A. In the study, pre-menopausal women who took the drug fenretinide
were less likely to develop breast cancer again in either breast. While fenretinide may be
beneficial to young women, the researchers say that the drug does not appear to be
effective in post-menopausal women.
In the study, which was presented at
the Second European Breast Cancer Conference in Brussels, Belgium in September 2000,
researchers studied nearly 3,000 pre-menopausal women with early-stage
breast cancer. Half of the women in the study were given fenretinide for five years after
breast cancer surgery while the other half received no additional treatment.
After seven years, the researchers
found that only 85 of the women who received fenretinide developed breast cancer again (27
developed breast cancer in the healthy breast; 58 developed breast cancer in the same
breast). By contrast, 129 women who did not receive fenretinide developed breast cancer
again (42 in the healthy breast; 87 in the same breast).
According to Dr. Alberto Costa of the
European Institute of Oncology in Milan, fenretinide could be very beneficial as both a
treatment option and as a preventive measure in young women at high risk of breast cancer.
Because fenretinide is a non-toxic derivative of vitamin A, many women can tolerate
fenretinide more easily than other drugs used to treat breast cancer (such as tamoxifen).
According to the researchers,
fenretinide works in pre-menopausal women by targeting those breast cells that are growing
more disorganized and beginning to multiplying out of control. While Dr. Costa and his
colleagues are not certain why fenretinide worked well in younger women, they believe the
effect may be related to the interaction of fenretinide and the female hormone estrogen
(which exists at higher levels in pre-menopausal women).
Though the results of the study need to
be confirmed in larger studies, the researchers believe the preliminary results are
promising. According to Dr. Costa, two additional studies on fenretinide have already
begun. One study will test fenretinide combined with a low-dose of tamoxifen while the
other will focus on using fenretinide in conjunction with hormone
replacement therapy (HRT) in older women.
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