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Journal of the National Cancer Institute Advance Access originally published online on April 29, 2008
JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute 2008 100(9):683; doi:10.1093/jnci/djn109
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press.

CORRESPONDENCE

Re: Adjuvant Chemotherapy With Sequential or Concurrent Anthracycline and Docetaxel: Breast International Group 02-98 Randomized Trial

Ebru Sari, Nilufer Bulut, Kadri Altundag

Affiliation of authors: Department of Medical Oncology, Hacettepe University Institute of Oncology, Ankara, Turkey

Correspondence to: Kadri Altundag, MD, Department of Medical Oncology, Hacettepe University Institute of Oncology, Sihhiye, Ankara 06100, Turkey (e-mail: altundag66{at}yahoo.com).

We read with great interest the article by Francis et al. (1) in which they showed that incorporating docetaxel into anthracycline-based therapy resulted in an improvement in disease-free survival (DFS) in adjuvant treatment of patients with lymph node–positive breast cancer. They also noted that sequential but not concurrent administration of docetaxel appeared to produce better DFS than anthracycline-based chemotherapy. However, patients in the concurrent docetaxel arm received more cyles (nine cyles vs seven cyles) and more athracyclines (cumulative doses of 225 vs 200 mg/m2) than patients in the sequential docetaxel arm. In this study, information about the HER2 status of tumors was also not described. However, a meta-analysis of eight published clinical trials (2) showed that, among women with HER2-positive breast cancer in the adjuvant setting, anthracycline-based regimens were superior to non–anthracycline-based regimens in DFS and overall survival. Thus, the HER2 status as well as the administration schedule may contribute to higher DFS observed in the sequential docetaxel arm than in the concurrent docetaxel arm in the Breast International Group 02-98 trial.

NOTES

Dr Francis declined our invitation to respond.

REFERENCES

1. Francis P, Crown J, Di Leo A, et al. Adjuvant chemotherapy with sequential or concurrent anthracycline and docetaxel: Breast International Group 02-98 randomized trial. J Natl Cancer Inst (2008) 100(2):121–133.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

2. Gennari A, Sormani MP, Pronzato P, et al. HER2 status and efficacy of adjuvant anthracyclines in early breast cancer: a pooled analysis of randomized trials. J Natl Cancer Inst (2008) 100(1):14–20.[Abstract/Free Full Text]


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This Article
Right arrow Extract Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
100/9/683-a    most recent
djn109v1
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Right arrow Articles by Sari, E.
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Right arrow Articles by Altundag, K.
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