WEDNESDAY, May 13 (HealthDay News) -- Older women with early-stage breast cancer do better after standard chemotherapy than they do with the oral drug capecitabine (Xeloda), a new study finds.

"After three years, 85 percent of people who received chemotherapy were doing well, and 68 percent of people who received capecitabine were doing well," said lead researcher Dr. Hyman Muss, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"In this trial, we had hoped that it [capecitabine] would be as good as standard therapy, so we would have a pill treatment with less side effects, but it turned out it wasn't as good," Muss said.

The report is published in the May 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Because it has fewer side effects, capecitabine has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in patients with advanced breast and colon cancer. Used in this context, it improves quality of life and may extend life for several months, the researchers said.

For the study, Muss and colleagues randomly assigned 600 women aged 65 and older with early-stage breast cancer to standard treatment with a combination of chemotherapy drugs or capecitabine.

Women taking capecitabine were roughly twice as likely to have a relapse of their cancer or die, the researchers found. Three years after treatment, 85 percent of women who received standard chemotherapy were alive and cancer-free compared with 68 percent of the women who received capecitabine, the team found.

The greatest benefit of chemotherapy was among the minority of women with hormone receptor-negative breast cancer, Muss said.

However, in women whose cancer is hormone receptor-positive, "we showed that standard therapy and capecitabine were pretty similar," Muss said. "It would be reasonable for these women to select capecitabine over standard chemotherapy, but my bias would still be to pick the standard right now."

Other studies with women younger than 70 have also found standard chemotherapy provided better outcomes than a single drug, the researchers noted.

Dr. Nancy Davidson, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, thinks that the results of this study confirm the benefit of chemotherapy for treating women with early-stage breast cancer.

"This is a critical trial for two reasons," Davidson said. "It demonstrates that properly selected older women, who comprise the vast majority of patients with breast cancer, can benefit from state of the art chemotherapy just as younger women do. Thus, age alone should not be a reason to withhold chemotherapy," she said.

"It also demonstrates, yet again, that multi-agent chemotherapy gives better results than single agent chemotherapy for early breast cancer," Davidson said. "This trial does not say that capecitabine is an inactive drug -- rather its routine use should be limited to women with advanced breast cancer where it is used quite successfully as a way to minimize symptoms of disease. It is also very useful in other cancers like colon cancer."

Barbara A. Brenner, executive director of Breast Cancer Action, thinks most women like those in the study should opt for standard chemotherapy.

"The premise is always, if there is something new, let's do it, it will be better, and this actually shows that this is not the case," Brenner said.

Brenner doesn't think women should choose capecitabine even though its benefit is close to chemotherapy in some women. "Close, but not close enough," she said.

In selecting a breast cancer treatment, women should ask their doctor about their chance of relapse, Brenner stressed. "Make your best informed decision," she said.

More information

For more on breast cancer, visit the American Cancer Society  .

TUESDAY, May 12 (HealthDay News) -- A home-based diet and exercise program slowed the decline of physical function in older, overweight cancer survivors, new research has found.

The study participants included 641 people in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, aged 65 to 91, who were overweight and were long-term (five years or more) survivors of breast, prostate and colorectal cancer. Some were assigned to a control group, while others were assigned to a 12-month intervention program that included telephone counseling, mailed materials promoting exercise, improved diet, and modest weight loss.

The study, published in the May 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that duration of strength-training exercise and endurance exercise minutes increased in the intervention group but stayed the same in the control group.

The researchers also found that the average intake of fruits and vegetables increased by 1.24 daily servings in the intervention group and by 0.13 daily servings in the control group. Average daily consumption of saturated fat decreased by 3.06 grams in the intervention group and by 1.07 grams in the control group. Members of the intervention group lost an average of 4.5 pounds, compared to 2.03 pounds in the control group.

At the start of the study, the average functional score for all the participants was 75.7 out of 100, which is comparable with the midpoint score for men and women aged 65 or older. By the end of the study, functional scores had declined an average of 2.15 points in the intervention group, compared to a decline of 4.84 points in the control group.

"Future studies should not only assess the effect [of exercise and diet intervention] on health and well-being, but also should address cost-related outcomes, especially given that the economic burden associated with functional decline and loss of independence is exceedingly high," according to study author Miriam C. Morey, of Duke University in Durham, N.C., and colleagues.

More information

The American Cancer Society offers health tips for cancer survivors  .

THURSDAY, May 7 (HealthDay News) -- It had been more than 10 years since a new treatment for glioblastoma was approved, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has now granted accelerated approval for the cancer drug Avastin for use against the aggressive brain cancer tumors, Business Week reports.

Avastin, developed by Genentech, which in March was bought by Switzerland-based Roche, is already approved as treatment for various forms of colon, breast and lung cancers, Business Week said. The FDA go-ahead was based on the drug's ability to achieve a partial or complete response in clinical trials, although Genentech said there is currently no data showing it reduces symptoms or improves survival. The company said it is planning a late stage trial of Avastin as a treatment for newly diagnosed glioblastoma.

About 10,000 people in the United States have glioblastoma -- the same type of tumor Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., has been fighting -- and the tumors often recur even after initial treatment, Genentech said in a news release, Business Week reported.

More information

The FDA has more about this drug's approval history.

THURSDAY, April 23 (HealthDay News) -- Cervical cancer screening should continue for women older than 50 -- even if they've had several negative test results -- because they have a similar level of risk as younger women, European researchers contend.

Previous studies have suggested there's little benefit in repeating smear tests in women 60 to 65 years old whose previous tests have been normal, and some experts have suggested that the age limit for the screening test should be lowered to 50.

But the new study, published online in BMJ, challenges that view.

Researchers analyzed the cervical cancer registry in The Netherlands and identified 219,000 women ages 45 to 54 and 445,000 women ages 30 to 44 who'd had three consecutive negative smear tests. During a follow-up period of 10 years, the incidence of cervical cancer was 41 per 100,000 among the younger women and 36 per 100,000 among the older women.

This indicates, the researchers said, that among women who've had regular screenings with normal results, age does not affect the risk of developing cervical cancer. Therefore, it would not be consistent to stop screening older women without relaxing the screening policy for younger women with similar screening histories, they said.

Bjorn Strander, director of cervical cancer screening at Sahlgren's University Hospital in Sweden, wrote in an accompanying editorial that new findings about invasive cancer in age groups above screening cutoff points need to be closely monitored, and experts should be ready to adjust screening ages as more information becomes available.

Modern computer technology makes it possible to issue personalized screening invitations to individuals, he noted. That would enable a shift of resources away from women who would not benefit from additional cervical cancer screening to those who would benefit, Strander said.

More information

The U.S. National Women's Health Information Center has more about cervical cancer.