What Can Femara Helps to Treat Breast Cancer

Over 215,000 women are clinically determined to have breast cancer each year. For many of them, surgical treatment to cut out the tumor is just the initial step in the battle against the illness, frequently followed by radiation or chemotherapy. In addition, they might have to consider whether to take the adjuvant treatment or not to effectively get rid of the recurrence of breast cancer.



If a woman's breast cancer does come back or propagates to other areas of the body, she can be at greater risk of dying from the disease. Women whose breast cancer is found in the nearby lymph nodes at diagnosis and those who receive chemotherapy after surgical treatment are considered to be at increased risk for breast cancer recurrence.



Postmenopausal women whose early-stage breast cancer is hormone-sensitive have a new option as their first hormone therapy following surgery. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lately authorised Femara (letrozole tablets) on December 28, 2005 for this style of use. This acceptance was based on a median of 24 months of treatment. The investigation is still ongoing to look for the long-term safety and effectiveness of Femara. Already a leading breast cancer treatment, Femara has become the only medicine in a group called aromatase inhibitors which is recognized for use both right after surgery and after five years of tamoxifen. The FDA granted Femara a high priority evaluation, a distinction reserved for medications which may potentially offer a significant improvement compared to items currently on the market.



A panel from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the nation's primary group of oncologists, recommends aromatase inhibitors, including Femara, be part of the ideal adjuvant treatment for this group of women.



"One of the greatest worries confronted by women who have been completely treated for early breast cancer is that their cancer will come back. With Femara, we now have a possibility that will help address that worry early on, even in patients who we know face the highest risk of recurrence," said Matthew Ellis, MD, PhD, FRCP, director of the Breast Cancer Program at Washington University in St. Louis.



In a big clinical study of post-surgery breast cancer therapy, experts compared the effectiveness of Femara and tamoxifen, a different drug prescribed after surgery. An analysis performed after 26 months indicated that Femara decreased the risk of breast cancer coming back by 21% over the reduction offered by tamoxifen. Patients taking Femara also showed a 27 percent decrease in the risk of the cancer spreading to distant areas of the body.



In this study, women at increased risk of recurrence experienced the best benefit from Femara. Femara reduced this risk by twenty nine percent in women whose breast cancer had already spread towards the lymph nodes at the time of diagnosis and by 30 percent in women who had prior chemotherapy. The final results also indicated that in these high-risk women, Femara reduced the risk of cancer spreading to distant parts of the body by 33 percent and 31 %, respectively.



From the research above, we can see that the Femara treatment will not induce any bad effect to the patients. The side effects such as joint pain, weight gain and so on are really scary.



Last but not least, the recurrence of breast cancer can be prevented if the Femara is fully utilized by the doctor. Maybe we just need more time to be confident with this new product.



This article is written by Kok Siong. He owns a website called Malaysia Cancer Research.