medwireNews: Postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive, early-stage breast cancer who extend adjuvant aromatase inhibitor (AI) therapy do not experience deterioration in their quality of life (QoL), suggest trial findings published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
The primary analysis of the phase III MA.17R study, which recruited women who had previously received an adjuvant AI for 4.5–6.0 years, showed improved disease-free survival for those who were randomly assigned to receive letrozole for 5 more years compared with placebo-treated participants.
And now the current analysis provides reassurance that the efficacy benefit does not come at the cost of significant deterioration of QoL, say Julie Lemieux, from Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec in Quebec City, Canada, and team.
The average changes from baseline in the Short Form-36 (SF-36) physical and mental component summary scores did not differ significantly between the letrozole and placebo treatment arms over the 5-year study period. This was also the case for the majority of the SF-36 subscales and all four domains of the menopause-specific QOL questionnaire.
The only exception was the SF-36 role-physical subscale, for which the letrozole group showed statistically significant deterioration, but Lemieux et al point out that the decrease “was less than the usually accepted clinically significant threshold.”
They hope that these QoL results together with the efficacy and toxicity data will assist healthcare providers and patients to make informed decisions about extending AI therapy.
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