In premenopausal women with operable breast cancer not selected for estrogen receptor status or with estrogen receptor-positive tumors, 5- and 10-year DFS and OS rates are significantly improved following adjuvant oophorectomy and tamoxifen.

The hypothesized benefit of adjuvant luteal phase oophorectomy was not shown in this large trial.

BACKGROUND:In premenopausal women treated for breast cancer, loss of bone mineral density (BMD) follows from menopause induced by chemotherapy or loss of ovarian function biochemically or by surgical oophorectomy. The impact on BMD of surgical oophorectomy plus tamoxifen therapy has not been described. METHODS: In 270 Filipino and Vietnamese premenopausal patients participating in a clinical trial assessing the impact of the timing in the menstrual cycle of adjuvant surgical oophorectomy on breast cancer outcomes, BMD was measured at the lumbar spine and femoral neck before this treatment, and at 6, 12, and 24 months after surgical and tamoxifen therapies. RESULTS: In women with a pretreatment BMD assessment and at least 1 other subsequent BMD assessment, no significant change in femoral neck BMD was observed over the 2-year period (20.006 g/cm 2 , 20.8%, P 5.19), whereas in the lumbar spine, BMD fell by 0.045 g/cm 2 (4.7%) in the first 12 months (P <.0001) and then began to stabilize. CONCLUSIONS:Surgically induced menopause with tamoxifen treatment is associated with loss of BMD at a rate that lessens over 2 years in the lumbar spine and no significant change of BMD in the femoral neck. Cancer 2013;119:3746-52. V C 2013 American Cancer Society.KEYWORDS: bone mineral density; breast cancer; menopause; oophorectomy; tamoxifen; femoral neck; spine; adjuvant drug therapy. INTRODUCTIONIn high-income countries, premenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive tumors account for 15% of the case burden in breast cancer; however, in low-and middle-income countries this percentage is approximately 36%. 1 Globally, one-third of the case burden in breast cancer is in this group. With increasingly effective therapies and the associated increases in long-term survival, the total "costs" of therapies are of concern to afflicted women.Adjuvant ovarian ablation improves survival in premenopausal women with operable breast cancer unselected for hormonal receptor status.2 Meta-analysis data also suggest a trend favoring ovarian ablation over luteinizing hormonereleasing hormone (LHRH) agonist treatment.2 Adjuvant surgical oophorectomy plus tamoxifen improves survival with risk reduction of 0.54 in hormone receptor positive patients.3 A variety of direct but underpowered studies and indirect risk reduction data suggest that this combined hormonal adjuvant treatment may modestly improve results over oophorectomy or tamoxifen alone. [4][5][6][7][8] The direct adjuvant comparison of tamoxifen with or without ovarian ablation or ovarian function suppression is being tested in the SOFT trial, in which, however, the fraction of women treated with surgical oophorectomy may be too small to allow conclusions about this specific combined hormonal treatment. In this context, in high-income countries, many premenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive tumors are treated with chemotherapy and tamoxifen, because of the conclusion that current chemotherapy regimens, particularly with taxanes, provide greater benefits than any hormonal th...

The purpose of this report is to estimate the proportions of familial and hereditary breast cancers among unselected cases of breast cancer in Vietnam. Two hundred and ninety-two unselected cases of incident breast cancer were recruited from the National Cancer Hospital, Hanoi, the largest cancer centre in Vietnam. Family histories were collected for 292 cases and a DNA sample was obtained for 259 cases. DNA samples were screened for mutations in the large exons of BRCA1 and BRCA2 using the protein truncation test and by allele-specific testing for 17 founder mutations which have been reported in other Asian populations. Complete gene sequencing was performed on two cases of familial breast cancer. Seven of 292 cases reported a relative with breast cancer and one patient reported a relative with ovarian cancer. A pathogenic BRCA mutation was detected in 2 of 259 cases; one BRCA1 carrier was diagnosed at age 51 and one BRCA2 carrier was diagnosed at age 42. Neither case reported a relative with breast or ovarian cancer. A family history of breast cancer is very uncommon among Vietnamese breast cancer patients. The frequency of pathogenic BRCA mutations in Vietnamese breast cancer patients is among the lowest reported worldwide.

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