Conditions: Breast Cancer
Keywords: stage II breast cancer stage IIIA breast cancer estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer progesterone receptor-positive breast cancer stage IA breast cancer stage IB breast cancer
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 2672
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
RATIONALE: Estrogen can stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells. Hormone therapy using triptorelin, exemestane, and tamoxifen may fight breast cancer by blocking the use of estrogen. It is not yet known whether giving triptorelin together with exemestane is more effective than triptorelin and tamoxifen in treating hormone-responsive breast cancer.

PURPOSE: This randomized phase III trial is studying triptorelin and exemestane to see how well they work compared to triptorelin and tamoxifen in treating premenopausal women with hormone-responsive breast cancer.

Detailed description:
OBJECTIVES:

* Compare the disease-free survival, breast cancer-free interval, distant recurrence-free interval and overall survival of premenopausal women with endocrine-responsive breast cancer when treated with triptorelin and exemestane vs triptorelin and tamoxifen.
* Compare the quality of life, including late side effects of early menopause, of patients treated with these regimens.

OUTLINE: This is a randomized, international, multicenter study. Patients are stratified according to planned use of concurrent adjuvant chemotherapy (yes vs no), and number of positive lymph nodes (0 vs 1 or more). Treatment duration is 5 years. Patients are followed every 3 months for 1 year, every 6 months for 5 years, and then annually thereafter. Quality of life is assessed at baseline, every 6 months for 2 years, and annually for 3 years.

Arms:
arm 1: Ovarian function suppression (OFS) by triptorelin (GnRH analogue) 3.75mg by im injection q28 days for 5 years plus tamoxifen 20mg orally daily for 5 years. Tamoxifen (T) begins after the completion of adjuvant chemotherapy if given, or approximately 6-8 weeks after the initiation of triptorelin. Bilateral oophorectomy or ovarian irradiation was allowed after at least 6 months of triptorelin. arm 2: Ovarian function suppression (OFS) by triptorelin (GnRH analogue) 3.75mg by im injection q28 days for 5 years plus exemestane 25mg orally daily for 5 years. Exemestane (E) begins after the completion of adjuvant chemotherapy if given, or approximately 6-8 weeks after the initiation of triptorelin. Bilateral oophorectomy or ovarian irradiation was allowed after at least 6 months of triptorelin.

Interventions: intervention 1: exemestane intervention 2: tamoxifen intervention 3: triptorelin
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: None intervention 2: None intervention 3: None

Protocol document: