A Fresh Look At Breast Cancer Treatments

New research shows how valuable some of the most recent treatments against breast cancer have been. The Early Show's medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay explains what a new study by Canadian researchers has found.

"This study is in the journal 'Cancer,' which is put out by the American Cancer Society. It was done by researchers in British Columbia in Canada who have access to detailed records about when women were treated, what they received, how long they lived. They used this data to look at survival over many decades," Senay explains.

"What they found was that in the late '90s, after a number of new medications were introduced, survival improved kind of dramatically by about 30 percent in women who had what's known as metastatic breast cancer. Metastatic means the tumor has spread beyond its original site into the lymph nodes, or other parts of the body. So this was the first time that they were able to show in a population-based study what had been seen in the clinical trials, that this does seems to be improving survival in a group of women who are thought to have an incurable cancer," she adds.

Asked what kind of drugs were introduced in the 1990s, Senay points out, "It's important to know that no single drug were they able to sort of tease out of this data and say, 'This is the answer.' But three classes of drugs generally became available around this time. The aromatase inhibitors. The second class would be drugs such as herceptin. And finally, drugs that are in the taxane families. These were the drugs that came out and were available. They're saying that this seems to have been very helpful to women."

"Who were the women taking these drugs? Only women who had a breast cancer that spread to other parts of their body?" The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen asks.

"That's right. Not all of these drugs are right for every woman. Some of these drugs work for some women, not others," Senay explains. "As with any medication, there's a risk and benefit. They obviously have side effects. While less toxic than some earlier drugs, they're not quite as toxic. There's been improvements on that front, too. "

There's also a new study looking at the success rate of breast cancer patients going through group therapy.

"A number of years ago some studies were done that suggested women with metastatic breast cancer had longer survival if they participated in group therapy. These researchers reporting in the journal "Cancer" again looked to see whether or not they could replicate some studies done a number of years ago. They couldn't. There was no difference in survival in women who participated in group therapy versus those who didn't," Senay says. "However, there were some upsides to group therapy. Quality of life issues were better. Many women found it beneficial to have a forum to talk about it, even if it didn't improve survival. And there's some interesting thinking on why it may not have shown the same benefit in this day and age than it did a number of years ago. Women may be more comfortable in general talking about cancer to family and friends. It might dilute the benefit of group therapy."