Taxotere is more effective than Navelbine in the adjuvant treatment of women with history of breast cancer. A new study, which compared these two drugs, showed docetaxel (Taxotere) would beat vinorelbine (Navelbine), in a head-to-head comparison.
This new study comes from Finland and is published in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study also found that patients who received nine weeks infusions of trastuzumab (Herceptin) were less likely to have disease recurrences with no increase in cardiac toxicity compared to those who did not receive Herceptin.
Treatment with Taxotere translated into a 42 percent reduction in the risk of breast cancer recurrences compared to treatment with Navelbine in the adjuvant setting. However, this comes with a price: women treated with docetaxel had more side effects compared to those who received vinorelbine such as allergic reactions, swelling and fever.
For this large study, Joensuu and his colleagues randomly assigned more than a thousand women with breast cancer three cycles of either docetaxel or vinorelbine, followed by three cycles of other cancer drugs.
Those patients, who had overexpression of HER2/neu gene (numbering 232), were also assigned either to receive nine weeks infusions of Herceptin or a placebo. Those who received the Herceptin had 58 percent reduction in cancer recurrences during the three-year follow-up compared to those who didn't get the drug.
Previous studies have shown that administration of adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin) for one year reduces the risk of breast cancer recurrence by about 50 percent in those women who have HER2 over expression. Those studies also found Herceptin to be related to increased risk heart problems. The current study with the shorter duration of Herceptin showed 58 percent reduction in cancer recurrence with no significant cardiac toxicity. |
