Drugs combination offers cancer hope

By KATHERINE HOBY

New Zealand women with advanced breast cancer can now get access to a promising new chemotherapy combination.

New Zealand has become the third country to approve Xeloda/Taxotere - a chemotherapy regime showing significant survival rates in patients with metastatic breast cancer.

A global study, which included six New Zealand women, showed patients treated with the combination had a 23 per cent improvement in median survival when compared to those treated with Taxotere alone.

New Zealand cancer specialist Dr Michael Findlay - who was an investigator in the international study - said the new combination offered patients "a survival advantage".

He said Xeloda/Taxotere held out hope for those cancer patients whose tumours had worsened despite first-line chemotherapy.

Taxotere is a second-line treatment, and before the registration of Xeloda in 1999, there was no clear third-line treatment option for women with advanced breast cancer.

While neither offers a cure, when combined they give patients added time at an earlier stage.

"This is very positive news for the approximately 600 New Zealand women suffering metastatic breast cancer," Dr Findlay said.

Results from the global study, which involved more than 500 patients, revealed better results from the drugs in combination than from Taxotere alone.

Breast cancer is this country's single biggest cancer killer of women, and New Zealand has one of the highest incidences of breast cancer worldwide.

About 30 per cent of the 2000 New Zealand women diagnosed with breast cancer every year will develop metastatic breast cancer.

The average survival time for those women is between 18 and 30 months.

nzherald.co.nz/health