MONDAY, Dec. 17 (HealthDay News) -- Compared to those treated with tamoxifen, breast cancer patients treated with anastrozole have no long-term excess fracture risk and superior long-term outcomes, according to research presented Friday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
John F. Forbes, M.D., of the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia, and colleagues compared outcomes at 100 months in 3,125 patients who were treated with anastrozole and 3,116 patients who were treated with tamoxifen.
Compared to the tamoxifen group, the researchers found that the anastrozole group had significantly improved disease-free survival (hazard ratio 0.85), time to recurrence (HR, 0.76), time to distant recurrence (HR, 0.84), and incidence of new contralateral breast cancer (odds ratio 0.6). They also found no significant group difference in breast cancer deaths, fracture rates and myocardial infarction rates. They identified no new safety concerns.
"These data confirm the long-term superior efficacy and safety of anastrozole over tamoxifen as initial adjuvant therapy for postmenopausal women with hormone sensitive early breast cancer," the authors conclude.
Abstract
