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Most Women Resume Normal Menses Chemotherapy
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Only about 15 percent of women develop long-term lost of their menstrual cycle (amenorrhea) after receiving follow-up chemotherapy for breast cancer, according to a report in the medical journal Cancer.
Rates of chemotherapy-induced menopause differ with different agents, the authors explain, and the incidence of long-term amenorrhea after anthracycline therapy, such as daunorubicin and doxorubicin, and taxane-containing therapy, such as paclitaxel and docetaxel, has not been established.
Dr. Monica N. Fornier and colleagues from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York investigated the incidence of long-term amenorrhea in 235 premenopausal women ages 40 years or younger whose breast cancer was treated with anthracycline and taxane-containing chemotherapy, with or without the subsequent use of tamoxifen.
Of the 166 women included in the analysis, 141 (85 percent) maintained or resumed regular menses after the completion of treatment, the authors report. The overall incidence of chemotherapy induced, long-term amenorrhea was 15 percent.
The incidence of amenorrhea among women who also received hormonal therapy with tamoxifen was 17 percent, the report indicates.
Women who developed long-term amenorrhea were significantly older than women who did not, the researchers note.
"Based on our data," the investigators conclude, "the sequential addition of taxane to a standard...anthracycline-based chemotherapy regimen does not appear to produce a high rate of chemotherapy-related amenorrhea compared with historic reports."
"We did not have information regarding estradiol, follicle-stimulating hormone, or luteinizing hormone secretion," the authors explain. "These data should be obtained in prospective studies because they may be relevant and important in clinical practice and in the decision-making process among younger women affected by breast carcinoma, who are concerned with the potential long-term risks of chemotherapy."
SOURCE: Cancer, October 15, 2005.