Women & Infants participates in international study of breast cancer patients

PROVIDENCE – Younger women diagnosed with breast cancer face a double whammy – that of dealing with a potentially life-threatening illness and facing the possibility that their cancer treatment may impede their ability to become pregnant. Breast cancer is the most common serious cancer in women and approximately 15 percent of patients are diagnosed in their reproductive years, according to Women & Infants Hospital, a Care New England facility.

Although most women with early stage breast cancer are cured of their disease, treatment often includes several years of endocrine therapy, during which time pregnancy is not recommended. By the time the course of treatment is complete, a woman’s fertility may be significantly reduced. Although there is no evidence that choosing to prematurely halt the treatment to try to become pregnant – as some women do ¬– the relevant data is limited, reported the hospital.

Researchers at Women & Infants Hospital’s Breast Health Center are participating in an international trial designed to answer that question: Will interrupting treatment in some women with early stage breast cancer so that they may attempt to become pregnant affect the long-term risk of cancer recurrence?

The trial, “Pregnancy Outcome and Safety of Interrupting Therapy for Women with Endocrine Responsive Breast Cancer,” sometimes called “POSITIVE,” is recruiting women in the United States and around the world, reported Dr. Sonali V. Pandya, the hospital’s primary investigator for this trial.

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“We’re looking for a very specific group of women,” Pandya said in the statement. Participants must be between the ages of 18 and 42, have been diagnosed with an estrogen receptor positive breast cancer for which they have been taking endocrine therapy, such as Tamoxifen, for between 18 and 30 months, and wish to become pregnant.

“The biology of cancers diagnosed in young women is different from those that develop in older women,” Pandya said. “We also know that five to 10 years of endocrine therapy like Tamoxifen can substantially reduce a woman’s fertility and chance of conception, but no one has studied the effect of interrupting that treatment to allow a woman to try to become pregnant.”

The goals of POSITIVE, which is being funded through the National Cancer Institute, are two-fold: To assess the risk of breast cancer relapse associated with the temporary interruption of endocrine therapy to allow for pregnancy, and to evaluate factors associated with pregnancy success after interrupting endocrine therapy.

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