Bone building drugs show some hopes as a wider anti-cancer drugs

CHICAGO—There is a possible new way to fight against breast cancer as doctors are quite excited to find that a drug which is used to avoid bone loss during breast cancer cure may significantly lower the risk of reoccurrence of breast cancer.
Zometa and other bone-building drugs known as bisphosphonates show some hope as a wider anti-cancer drugs in this first large study. The cancers that already spread to the bone are treated by Zometa, a drug developed by Novartis AG.

1,800 premenopausal women who were getting hormone treatments for their initial stage breast cancer included in this new study. It was found that Zometa reduced almost one-third chances that the cancer would return.

According to Dr. Claudine Isaacs, who is director of the clinical breast cancer program at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center, “It’s a significant finding that perhaps change a lot of current practices”

Women, after menopause, have the proportion of almost three-fourth breast cancer occurrences and it is possible that they may also be helped by Zometa but it has not been tested in this age group yet.

Dr. Michael Gnant of the Medical University of Vienna led the study and it was reported in American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago on Saturday.

If the benefits were also found in a second ongoing study, doctors expect that some other cancers that have the tendency to spread to bones like Kidney cancer and prostrate cancer will also be tested against Zometa.

Breast cancer is the second big cause of death as well as the most common cancer in women. It is expected that 40,930 women would die this year due to breast cancer in the United States and there would be almost 184,450 new cases.

Some standard treatments for breast cancer are radiation, chemotherapy, surgery and if the tumors are same as in the study, hormone-blocking drugs that are supported to grow by progesterone or estrogen. These hormone-blockers usually weaken the bones and bisphosphonates such osteoporosis medication Fosamax is used to treat this kind of side effects

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