Many women with advanced breast cancer dread the needles and clinic visits required for standard chemotherapy. Could a simple pill work just as well? A study looked at this hope for patients with HER2-negative recurrent or metastatic breast cancer. Seventy-two adults in the US and Czech Republic took either an oral version of paclitaxel or the standard intravenous version. Both groups received the same drug, just in different forms, every 28 days.
The results showed that the oral pill and the IV injection were nearly equal in stopping the cancer from growing. About one-quarter of patients on the oral pill saw their tumors shrink, compared to about one-quarter on the IV treatment. The time before the cancer grew back was also similar, averaging 5.5 months for the pill and 4.7 months for the IV. Overall survival time was comparable at 17.1 months versus 13.2 months.
The real difference lay in the side effects. The oral pill caused more diarrhea and nausea but spared patients from the nerve damage and hair loss common with IV chemo. Both treatments caused fatigue. Because this was a Phase II study, it was not designed to prove one drug is definitively better than the other. It simply shows the oral option is a safe and feasible choice worth considering.