Using chemotherapy and the drug Herceptin to treat early-stage breast cancer for women with an aggressive form of the disease could help boost survival rates, a study has found.

The research also found that the survival rate for patients given chemotherapy drug Adriamycin was similar to the survival rate for patients whose drug regime did not include that drug.

Dennis Slamon, of the University of California, Los Angeles, lead author of the study, said this suggested that Adriamycin, a type of drug called an anthracycline, was not necessary to treat the disease at all. Combining Adriamycin and Herceptin has been shown to cause permanent heart damage.

The study showed that those who took a combination of Adriamycin, Herceptin and chemotherapy drugs Carboplatin and Taxotere had a five-year survival rate of 92%, while 91% of those who took Herceptin, Carboplatin and Taxotere, but no Adriamycin, were still alive after five years.

Dr Slamon said: "We're encouraged that the survival advantages found in this study have been maintained and continue to be significant. I believe there's room for even further improvement."

Herceptin is known to be effective for women with HER-2 positive breast cancer which affects between 20% and 25% of all of those diagnosed with the disease every year.

He said that those who took Adriamycin and Herceptin together were five times more likely to suffer from congestive heart failure, and twice as likely to develop sustained cardiac dysfunction.

Dr Slamon said: "Given the data in this study, it makes one really question what role Adriamycin should play in the treatment of HER-2 positive early breast cancer, or in the treatment of early breast cancer at all. This trial should impact the way these breast cancers are treated, with a non-anthracycline regimen being our preferred option.

"I think this is a change that is going to be slow in coming, unfortunately, as many of our adjuvant treatments for breast cancer are built on the backbone of anthracyclines. While they're effective, whatever gain patients may receive is more than made up for in the serious and chronic long-term side effects."

An editorial that appears alongside the study, which is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, stated: "The present is clearly brighter for patients with HER-2 positive breast cancer and the future promises to shine even more."

Source: NEJM