Hot Flushes May Predict Breast Cancer Drug Success

Hot flushes, night sweats or painful joints may be good news for women taking hormone-based drugs for breast cancer — it may mean their tumors are less likely to return, researchers said.

Women with any of these menopause-like symptoms after taking AstraZeneca’s breast cancer drug Arimidex or generic tamoxifen were 30 percent less likely to have their cancer return over the next nine years, they found.

“The treatment is designed to starve potential cancers of estrogen and these symptoms mean that there are lower levels of estrogen in the body,” said Jack Cuzick, an epidemiologist at Cancer Research UK, who led the study.

“But it is too early to say whether having these symptoms is essential for the treatment to be effective. At the moment all we can say is that the symptoms indicate the likely success of the treatment.”

Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among women worldwide, according to the American Cancer Society. The group estimates about 465,000 women died of breast cancer globally in 2007, and 1.3 million new cases were diagnosed.

Declining death rates from breast cancer in developed countries have been attributed to early detection through mammography screening and to improved treatment.

Read more at Reuters