Breast Cancer Patients Welcome Hot Flashes & Night Sweats

Women have long dreaded the days and nights when hot flashes and night sweats—consequences of age and gender— disrupt their lives and cause much emotional and physical discomfort. But there are other women, those receiving treatment for breast cancer, who might learn to appreciate, in a necessary way, that those side effects are also signs of a successful treatment program.
Anastrazole and tamoxifen were the two treatments recently given to women in a trial to assess the drugs’ side effects as compared to the recurrence, or lack thereof, of breast cancer in the patients. The results of the trial found that the women who reported vasomotor or joint symptoms as a result of the drugs, the former symptom being the one that produces hot flashes and other similar responses, had a greater decrease in the recurrence of breast cancer than those without any symptoms.
The results of the Arimidex, Tamoxifen, Alone, or in Combination (ATAC) trial were published in the most recent edition of The Lancet Oncology. Researchers Jack Cuzick PhD, Ivana Sestak PhD, David Cella PhD, and Lesley Fallowfield PhD supplied the report on behalf of the trial group, whose funding was provided by Cancer Research UK and AstraZeneca. Though more studies will need to be pursued, the outcome of the trial is an overall positive one that gives hope to breast cancer patients.
A total of 3,964 women participated in the ATAC trial, all of whom had hormone-receptor-positive tumors in the postmenopausal stages of their lives. The purpose of the study was to compare those who reported vasomotor or joint symptoms to those who did not to examine the relationship between the symptoms and the frequency of breast cancer recurrence. The 37.5 percent of women, which equaled 1,486 of the subjects, reported those symptoms at the time of the three-month follow-up appointments. What was discovered was that approximately one-third of the total number of patients with the post-treatment symptoms saw a decrease in the cancer recurrence over the following nine years.
In more exact terms, of the 37.5 percent of women who noted hot flashes and night sweats at the three-month follow-up visit saw 18 percent who had no breast cancer recurrence after nine years, as compared to a 23 percent figure from those reporting a lack of those symptoms. And of the 31.4 percent of women who reported joint symptoms, only 14 percent saw a cancer recurrence, while 23 percent was the number for those not reporting joint symptoms.
The cause of the vasomotor and joint symptoms is the depletion of estrogen due to the drugs given to the women. While the estrogen levels were not the focus of the study, the correlation between them and the symptoms and subsequent cancer recurrence reduction will need to be studied more comprehensively in further studies.
Cuzick, one of the researchers and an epidemiologist at Cancer Research UK, noted, “The treatment is designed to starve potential cancers of estrogen and these symptoms mean that there are lower levels of estrogen in the body. But it is too early to say whether having these symptoms is essential for the treatment to be effective. At the moment all we can say is that the symptoms indicate the likely success of the treatment.”
The basis of the study could help reassure women who suffer from the taxing symptoms that they may see less of a chance of cancer return as a result. Considering that approximately 1.3 million new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed in 2007 alone, according to the American Cancer Society, any positive results of breast cancer research give hope to those suffering from it and dealing with the treatments available for it.
While doctors continue to seek remedies for patients who suffer from joint problems, hot flashes, and/or night sweats as a result of the breast cancer treatments, the symptoms can--for now--be viewed as a sign that the medications are working. The effects of anastrazole and tamoxifen seem to be positively linked to a lessened recurrence of the cancer, and that can only be viewed as a positive sign in cancer research and treatment.