Women having advanced breast cancer may now have a new treatment alternative. According to a new study, survival can be boosted in postmenopausal women with the most common type of breast cancer, known as estrogen receptor-positive by adding chemotherapy to standard cancer-suppressing tamoxifen, and it's best given before the tamoxifen regimen starts, doctors reported on Friday.

A combination of two drugs that aim tumors significantly increased the lives of women who had stopped reacting to other treatments.

Dr Kathy Albain, the lead researcher and professor of medicine at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine explained, "Chemotherapy with Adriamycin has advantage over and above what tamoxifen would do."

Albain's team gave tamoxifen to 381 women, chemotherapy was given to 587 and 590 got both the treatments. However, women receiving chemo were more likely to have drops in white blood cells, important for fighting infections, the team noted.

"It's kind of like having a double brake on your tumor. If the first one fails, the second one does the job," said the Dr Kimberly Blackwell of Duke University.

In all, after accounting for study dropouts, 1,460 women received treatment and the results were presented on Friday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

In a second study, Albain's team examined whether a gene test, called Oncotype DX, could predict which women would benefit from chemotherapy.

When the researchers performed the test on 367 specimens, they found that a few women were identified who may not need the chemo, despite the fact that they have cancer that spread to lymph nodes.