Teresa, I’m sorry but our breast cancer specialist will be out of her office today. We will try again tomorrow. I think this will give you a good opportunity to familiarize yourself (if you haven’t already) with the information I posted in the previous post.
If your inquiries have changed once you’ve read more indepth info, great. We’re doing our job! Please let us know if they have.

Best to you and your sister,
Janine
fm

As Dr West said, using a hormonal drug such as tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor is standard when the breast cancer is ER-positive. Tamoxifen and AIs work differently and an AI can work even when tamoxifen does not. However, as Dr West said, an AI can only work if your sister is postmenopausal (ovaries not working). In regards to AIs weakening the bones, that is usually not an issue with metastatic breast cancer to bone because we routinely give bone-strenghtening drugs such as xgeva or zometa to those women.

All the best,
Dr Cianfrocca

I’ll need to see what we can find out about bromocriptine; it doesn’t come up as an issue in my lung cancer patients.

It’s not that a drug like Zometa is absolutely critical for patients receiving an AI, but it can combat the acceleration of osteoporosis that can occur with hormone therapies. However, it’s not our place to make a medical recommendation for whether someone here should or shouldn’t pursue a specific treatment.

I am not aware of any actual evidence that indicates a significant benefit of the Budwig protocol with hormone therapy or in metastatic breast cancer in general.

-Dr. West

Hi Tong, I hope you feel more equiped to know your sister’s situation and ways that may help. I must confess reading your interaction with these two doctors reminds me how little I know about most of this. As you can see from my signature below my husband has lung cancer. The treatments are very different between lung and breast cancer.
You want to know more about the interaction between Al and bromocriptin. I googled it yesterday but came up with nothing. We will wait and see if Dr. West comes up with anything. Maybe he will also let us know how or where he found his information if he finds it.

The best to you both,
Janine

Thank you so much Dr. Cianfrocca for following this thread. It’s so very helpful.
Janine

AIs, like other hormone therapies, can work very well against bone disease. In general, if they are going to be effective, they tend to be similarly effective throughout the body. The brain is one area where many of our systemic therapies don’t penetrate, but otherwise, systemic therapies, whether chemotherapy or hormone therapy or targeted therapy, often works comparably on lesions throughout the body.

Good luck.

-Dr. West

The acute effects like fever and pain/malaise tend to go away after the first 2-3 infusions. I don’t know of any specific intervention for them — you can give something like Tylenol just to help with the symptoms, but they tend to diminish with the next few infusions.

The calcium is given because Zometa (zoledronate) shifts calcium from the blood into the bones. Without taking the supplemental calcium, far more people on Zometa will develop a low blood calcium level. In fact, Zometa is a leading treatment for high blood calcium levels, which can occur with cancer and a few other conditions. It’s important to follow the calcium levels to ensure that a person’s levels aren’t getting too high or too low, but it’s very standard to have a person on Zometa or XGEVA take supplemental calcium and vitamin D.

-Dr. West