Low dose oestrogen could help breast cancer sufferers

Women who are suffering from a recurrence of breast cancer may find a low dose of oestrogen could help them to battle the disease.

New research has found that women who have been contending with the condition for a while may need a dose of the hormone to help them. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and looked at 66 women, who may have had women's health insurance.

All of the women had already been treated with aromatase inhibitors, such as Pfizer's Aromasin, Novartis's Femara and Arimidex from AstraZeneca, and had all suffered from a relapse.

Dr Matthew Ellis of Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, who carried out the research with a team of experts, told women's health insurance holders that the women were seeing progression of their disease. He added that these patients were faced with the option of chemotherapy.

"We found that oestrogen treatment stopped disease progression in many patients and was much better tolerated than chemotherapy would have been," he added, saying that the low dosage was better for the patients than the higher intake of the medication.

However, a weakness of the treatment was that, while it helped 30 per cent of the patients, 30 per cent of these people experienced growth of tumours in the future. A third of this 30 per cent were then helped by reverting back to the aomatase inhibitors, which may have been boosted by the oestrogen treatment.

This is not the only good news for breast cancer sufferers this week, as the latest research into Avastin, from pharmaceutical company Roche, has found it may be able to boost the lifespan of sufferers.

By James McCann

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