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New strategy protects breast cancer patients from osteoporosis
Although tremendous progress has been made in cancer therapy in recent decades, many patients still often suffer from serious side effects and sequelae. In breast cancer patients, for example, the treatment increases the risk of osteoporosis. Researchers have now shown that a new strategy can protect against bone loss.
Side effects and secondary diseases
According to figures from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), more than 70,000 women a year have a breast tumor in Germany. Around 17,000 women die from it every year. Cancer is already a serious fate, aggravating added that the therapies usually can be associated with serious side effects and sequelae. For example, a five-year antihormonal treatment may protect women with estrogen-dependent breast cancer from relapsing. But this also increases the risk of osteoporosis (bone loss). Researchers could now prove an effective counterstrategy.
Breast cancer screening Majority of breast cancers depend on sex hormones
The results are from the Austrian Breast and Colorectal Cancer Study Group ABCSG (Austrian Breast & Colorectal Cancer Study Group). As reported by "science.orf.at", more than 3,000 patients with hormone-dependent breast cancer after menopause and hundreds of physicians in 65 treatment centers in Austria participated in the study. "It was the largest breast cancer study in Austria so far," said Michael Gnant, ABCSG President and Chief Executive Officer of the Department of Surgery at Vienna's AKH. The study was preceded by a long scientific work by the ABCSG on breast cancers that are dependent on the female sex hormones. This applies to around 70 percent. Years ago, treatment with anti-hormonal substances could be established in certain patients as an alternative to the much more side-effect-rich chemotherapy.
Standard therapy promotes bone loss
"The standard therapy for hormone-dependent postmenopausal breast cancer is an antihormonal treatment with so-called aromatase inhibitors after surgery. You are aiming for a five-year therapy, "said Gnant. Such drugs block the body's own estrogen production in women. As a result, cancer cells grow more slowly and relapses occur much less frequently. However, there is the problem that the anti-hormonal treatment promotes the onset of morbid bone loss (osteoporosis) with subsequent fractures - such as femoral neck fractures, vertebral body fractures or arm fractures after falls - promotes. "That's the case with around 15 percent of breast cancer patients," said Gnant.
Patients "saving a serious long-term success in cancer therapy"
Therefore, the scientists were looking for a counter-strategy. For this, 3,425 such patients were randomly divided into two groups, half of whom were injected twice a year with a substance (denosumab, a monoclonal antibody) used to treat osteoporosis. The other half of the patients got a placebo. The result of the study, which ran between the end of 2006 and 2013, found that the incidence of bone fractures among women with drug treatment decreased by a total of 50 percent. In addition, they increased bone density in the spine by ten percent, at the hip by eight and in the femoral neck by six percent. Gnant commented on the study, "It allows us to save patients from having a long-term cancer therapy episode without any additional side effects. It is a groundbreaking result, the uniqueness has even surprised us. In any case, our data must have an impact on the daily practice of treating these breast cancer patients in the future. "In June, details will be presented at the Annual Congress of the American Oncology Society. (Ad)
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