A new pharmaceutical weapon is emerging in the breast cancer fight.

One of the latest studies shows that younger women battling the disease may benefit from a drug used to treat the brittle bones disease known an osteoporosis.

Austrian researchers have found that women who took Zometa had a one-third lower risk of the cancer spreading to the bone, along with other benefits.

The findings were presented today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago.

Zometa (zoledronic acid) is used to treat bone metastases and was recently approved to treat osteoporosis. When given to premenopausal women undergoing ovarian suppression and hormone therapy, it was found to significantly reduce the risk of recurrence in early-stage breast cancer.

Although about 5 percent of participants had had chemotherapy before surgery to shrink the tumor, none received later chemo. In Europe, breast cancer patients are commonly treated with endocrine therapy alone,” said Dr. Joanne Mortimer, vice chairwoman of medical oncology at City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif. In the United States, some, but not all, women in this group are treated without chemotherapy.

“This is not a trial about hormones instead of chemo. It’s about Zometa,” Mortimer said. “We know that this drug improves bone health, but there is also some evidence that it may actually have an effect on cancer cells, and the fact that this was seen in this population is very exciting.”

The press briefing also highlighted research on the effectiveness of chemotherapy after
surgery for older women with early-stage breast cancer. The study suggests that standard adjuvant chemotherapy is effective in older women and cannot be replaced by the entirely oral chemotherapy agent, capecitabine. The study is important since little data exist on the effects of adjuvant chemotherapy in older women, and physicians have little guidance about whether chemotherapy may do more harm than good in this population.

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