Early prediction of menopausal status after chemotherapy in women with early breast cancer in order to optimize adjuvant endocrine therapy.

BACKGROUND

Optimal endocrine therapy for premenopausal breast cancer patients after chemotherapy requires accurate menopausal status assessment. Current methods for determining resumption of ovarian function after chemotherapy are suboptimal. This study aims to evaluate the predictive value of pretreatment anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) serum levels for predicting resumption of ovarian function after chemotherapy (CT).

METHODS

This prospective study included premenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer undergoing CT. AMH was measured using the picoAMH assay of Anshlabs. The primary outcome was resumption of ovarian function, defined as menstrual cycle resumption or estradiol levels above 110 pmol/L within 24 months after CT.

RESULTS

Among 109 patients, pretreatment AMH was a strong predictor of resumption of ovarian function (AUC 0.86) and an optimal cut-off of 0.62 μg/L was calculated. AMH >0.62 μg/L identified women at higher risk for ovarian function resumption (sensitivity 69.9 %, specificity 88.5 %), with a false negative rate of 11.5 % and false positive rate of 30.1 %. Combining AMH and age improved predictive accuracy only slightly. No additional predictors were identified. Survival analysis confirmed that women with low pretreatment AMH (<0.62 μg/L) or older age (>40.2 years) experienced significantly less frequent and delayed ovarian function resumption.

CONCLUSION

Pretreatment AMH is a valuable tool for predicting ovarian function resumption after chemotherapy in breast cancer patients, so that a GnRH agonist can be recommended appropriately. However, the predictive value of pretreatment AMH for permanent ovarian insufficiency is too limited to determine the postmenopausal status sufficiently accurately to switch upfront to another endocrine treatment, the aromatase inhibitors.