Study: Stem-Cell Transplants Little Help for High-Risk Breast Cancer

An experimental treatment that follows high-dose chemotherapy with a stem-cell transplant does not improve survival for women with high-risk breast cancer, according to researchers.

Two studies reported in the New England Journal of Medicine raise further doubts about the stem-cell transplants, which were performed on thousands of women in the 1990s but cut back after studies in 1999 showed no clear survival benefit.

The procedure involves collecting stem cells from the blood or bone marrow of breast cancer patients, who then undergo high doses of chemotherapy. The stem cells are reinfused to blood-producing bone marrow that has been destroyed by the chemotherapy drugs.

In the 1990s, some doctors began holding out hope that high-dose chemotherapy combined with a bone marrow transplant might save women whose aggressive breast tumors had reappeared after initial treatment.

But studies subsequently began to show that women who received conventional lower-dose chemotherapy fared just as well as those who receiving higher doses.

In one of the new studies involving 511 women, half of whom received the experimental treatment, nine patients died from complications from the procedure. Nine others developed leukemia or leukemia-like illnesses.

A separate study from the Netherlands of 885 women whose breast cancer had spread to the lymph nodes showed women who underwent bone-marrow transplants were a little more likely to be alive after five years, but their overall survival rate was only slightly better than those receiving low-dose chemotherapy alone.

The standard dose of chemotherapy "remains the standard of care for such patients," said the authors of one study.

Other Sources: New England Journal of Medicine