UC Irvine News Brief: Study shows drug combo may lengthen lives of some with breast cancer
UC Irvine’s Dr. Rita Mehta led a study that shows anti-estrogen combo is better than single drug.
Post-menopausal women with a certain type of metastatic breast cancer may have a new treatment option that could lengthen their lives, according a study led by UC Irvine oncologist Dr. Rita Mehta. The findings were presented this weekat the 2011 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. The combination of the two anti-estrogen drugs anastrozole and fulvestrant extended the median survival time of women with hormone receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer by more than six months compared to those who underwent standard treatment with anastrozole alone. Mehta says the results of the phase III trial are particularly exciting because “these patients have not had a new treatment that gave them an overall survival benefit in more than a decade.”