Endocrine Therapy Break Permits Pregnancies Without Affecting Survivorship Outcomes
Pausing endocrine therapy to give breast cancer survivors an opportunity to attempt pregnancy does not increase their short-term recurrence rates, researchers reported in study findings (https://doi.org/10.1158/1538-7445.SABCS22-GS4-09) presented at the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. Additionally, survivors’ conception rates are on par or higher than those among the general public.
For their single-arm study, researchers enrolled 518 breast cancer survivors aged 42 or younger who had completed 18–30 months of adjuvant endocrine therapy. After a median 41 months’ follow-up, 8.9% of the survivors had experienced a recurrence, which the researchers said was on par with the 9.2% recurrence rate reported in another study (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1803164) of comparable breast cancer survivors who had not stopped endocrine therapy treatment.
The researchers followed 497 survivors for pregnancy status. Of those, 368 (74%) had at least one pregnancy and 317 (63.8%) had at least one live birth. After completing their pregnancies or attempted pregnancies, 76.3% of the survivors resumed their endocrine therapy.
The researchers are planning additional follow-up to assess long-term implications. “The POSITIVE trial demonstrates that for young women with early, hormone receptor–positive breast cancer desiring pregnancy, temporary interruption of endocrine therapy to attempt pregnancy does not confer a greater short-term risk of recurrence than that observed in a modern historical control group that did not interrupt endocrine therapy,” the researchers concluded.
Learn more about having fertility conversations with your patients (https://www.ons.org/podcasts/episode-208-how-have-fertility-preservation-conversations-your-patients) and other nursing support strategies (https://www.ons.org/podcasts/episode-9-how-support-adolescent-and-young-adult-patients-cancer) for young adults with cancer on the Oncology Nursing Podcast.