New drugs cocktail gives hope to breast cancer sufferers

Sunday, 1 June 2003 12:00 AM

New trials carried out by Cancer Research UK have shown that treating breast cancer with a cocktail of chemotherapy drugs may significantly improve a woman's chances of surviving the early stages of cancer.

In the largest trial of its kind in the world, researchers found that the right combination of modern chemotherapy treatments - which includes the drug 'Epirubicin' - breast cancer recurrence following surgery could be prevented and deaths reduced.

According to Dr. Chris Poole from Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Birmingham, the combinations of drugs has been refined over the years, resulting in improved survival rates.

"This particular trial has yielded a dramatic difference in survival and it's incredibly rare to get such a significant increase by using existing drugs in a slightly different way," he said.

At the moment, the majority of the 40,000 new breast cancer cases diagnosed in the UK each year are treated with chemotherapy and it is now hoped that thousands more women will survive as a result of this new treatment.

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