A study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found the risk of death after five years was reduced by more than a third for breast cancer patients treated with both chemotherapy and tamoxifen, an anti-estrogen drug, when compared with treatment with tamoxifen alone.
Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women.
An estimated 44,190 women will die of the disease this year, says the American Cancer Society. In the study, researchers compared the rates of survival and cancer spread among 2,300 patients who had undergone surgery for breast cancer. The patients were divided into three groups that received different postsurgical drug treatment. Another group got tamoxifen and two chemotherapy drugs, methotrexate and fluorouracil. The third group received all of the other drugs in addition to cyclophosphamide.