Drug Could Protect Fertility in Breast Cancer Patients.
A commonly used drug can help young women with breast cancer retain the ability to have babies, apparently protecting their ovaries from the damage caused by chemotherapy, researchers reported here on Friday.
The treatment could provide a new option for dealing with one of the painful dilemmas faced by young cancer patients — that doing the utmost to save their lives might impair or even ruin their fertility.
Researchers said that the drug goserelin, which temporarily shuts down the ovaries, appears to protect fertility. In a clinical trial, women who were given goserelin injections along with chemotherapy had less ovarian failure and gave birth to more babies than women receiving only the chemotherapy.
“It’s not a panacea, but based on these data, it may be the right choice for some patients,” said Dr. Ann H. Partridge, a breast cancer specialist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and an author of the study, which is being presented here at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/31/business/drug-could-protect-fertility-in-breast-cancer-patients.html?hp
