In January, 1972, the Southwest Oncology Group initiated two randomized studies for patients with advanced breast cancer. The study for patients with prior chemotherapy showed a 33% response rate with adriamycin. The study for patients without previous chemotherapy consisted of three treatment regimens; a weekly repeated combination of cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, 5-fluorouracil, vincristine, and prednisone; these same five drugs given in courses of 5 days repeated every 4 weeks; and adriamycin as a single agent every 3 weeks. For the 283 evaluable patients, the response rates were: weekly combination 63/106 (59%); intermittent combination 39/98 (40%); and adriamycin 31/79 (39%). The median duration of response was 8 months for weekly combination, 10 months for intermittent therapy and only 4 months for adriamycin. Leukopenia was the dose-limiting toxicity with all three regimens. The weekly combination is the most effective therapy for patients with advanced disease. Extensive trails of combinations that include adriamycin are underway.
The tumors from approximately 50% of patients with breast cancer contained estrogen receptor (ER). ER appeared more often and at higher levels in the tumors of postmenopausal women. Eleven out of 12 patients who had multiple ER assays from various metastatic sites showed no significant discrepancies in ER values. ER level appears to decrease as the duration of metastatic cancer increase. Patients with ER in the tumor more frequently have bone metastases than those without ER. Visceral metastases occurred more often with ER negative patients and appeared to have a more malignant course with significant shorter survival.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.