MONDAY, May 8, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- For postmenopausal breast cancer patients receiving aromatase inhibitors, oral osteoporosis therapy (OPT) is associated with improved survival, according to a study published online May 2 in Cancer.
Allan Lipton, M.D., from the Penn State Hershey Medical Center, and colleagues enrolled 7,576 postmenopausal women in the MA.27 phase 3 adjuvant trial. Patients were permitted bisphosphonates to prevent or treat osteopenia/osteoporosis and were followed for event-free and distant disease-free survival (EFS and DDFS).
The researchers found that osteoporosis was reported by 654 women (8.6 percent) at baseline and by 1,294 women in total. At baseline, oral OPT was received by 10.8 percent of the women and by 36 percent in total. There were 693 EFS events (9.15 percent) and 321 DDFS events (4.2 percent) during a median follow-up of 4.1 years. There was no correlation noted for EFS or DDFS with osteoporosis. There were few EFS events before OPT initiation, with no substantial evidence of a time-differing effect on outcomes. OPT correlated with improved EFS and DDFS (hazard ratios for yes versus no, 0.67 and 0.57, respectively). There was no association for time-differing OPT with EFS. There was no correlation for OPT with incidence of visceral-only metastasis.
"Oral OPT, administered to postmenopausal breast cancer patients receiving adjuvant aromatase inhibitor therapy, was associated with improved EFS and DDFS; the time of OPT initiation (a time-dependent effect) did not affect the outcome," the authors write.
Several authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
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