Giving adjuvant chemotherapy more frequently or giving drugs sequentially, rather than together, in early breast cancer reduces recurrence and mortality rates, a meta-analysis suggests.

The findings come from a study that aimed to determine whether increasing dose intensity improved patient outcomes.

The researchers, from the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group, examined data on 37,000 women, who were mostly younger than 70 with node positive disease, from 26 randomised controlled trials involving dose-intensification between 1985 and 2011.

More than half the trials examined changing the frequency of chemotherapy from every three weeks to fortnightly – effectively increasing the dose by 50%, the authors wrote.