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Anti-inflammatory arthritis drug may slow breast cancer growth

Category: Breast

A common anti-inflammatory medication may have benefits for women who have received positive breast cancer tests, according to a new study presented at IMPAKT Breast Cancer Conference in Brussels, Belgium.

Researchers from the Maastricht University Medical Centre in The Netherlands reported that celecoxib, which is commonly used to treat arthritis, aided in preventing breast cancer cells from spreading to other parts of the body and even helped kill these cells when paired with standard treatments.

Celecoxib and other COX-2 inhibitors have been receiving much attention for their anti-tumor properties, and the findings from the clinical trial confirm results of previous experimental studies, the researchers said. This indicates that there may in fact be a strong benefit to adding the medication to standard therapies.

“We were pleased that the results from our clinical trial largely confirmed the existing data from several pre-clinical studies by showing that COX-2 inhibition leads to changes in cell proliferation, apoptosis, and extracellular matrix biology in primary breast cancer tissues,” said Juergen Veeck, who led the study.

However, he added that given the fact that this was a short-term study, more research is needed to confirm these benefits.