Breast cancer patients may be offered chemo-free treatment

Researchers for the cancer charity analyzed 16 trials involving LHRH agonists and found them to be as effective as conventional chemotherapy for many pre-menopausal breast cancer patients with the added benefit of them being better tolerated by patients. About two thirds of pre-menopausal patients have hormone sensitive breast cancer which equates to around 5,500 women being diagnosed in the UK every year.

This means women, whose breast cancer is hormone sensitive, may not need risk becoming permanently infertile or suffering the unpleasant side effects caused by chemotherapy. LHRH agonists stop the pituitary gland producing luteinising hormone, and so remove the stimulus for the ovaries to make oestrogen. But once the treatment stops the ovarian function usually returns to normal.

Overall 42,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year in the UK. Of these around 80 per cent are over the age of 50.

Kate Law, head of clinical trials at Cancer Research UK, said: “This is a very encouraging finding and suggests breast cancer treatment for some pre-menopausal women could be less devastating while being equally effective as conventional chemotherapy.”