Thousands of women suffering from breast cancer could be spared chemotherapy or benefit from gentler versions of it without their life being endangered, a new research showed.

The findings need to be confirmed in clinical trials, but experts said the test could already be used to spare some women from the awful effects of cancer drugs.

A common drug called doxorubicin, which is sold as Adriamycin and under other names as generic brands, is known to prevent recurrence and death, but poses risk of heart problems and leukemia.

The study revealed that women had been better without being administered Adriamycin, which is known as treatment for many years.

"We are backing off on chemotherapy and using chemotherapy more selectively" in certain women, said Dr. Eric Winer of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston in her presentation of the study at the 30^th annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Dr. Stephen Jones of Baylor-Sammons Cancer Center tested using Taxotere, a drug not linked to heart problems in more than 1,000 women with early breast cancer. After 7 years, 87 percent of those given Taxotere survived, compared with 82 percent of those given Adriamycin. Moreover, those given Taxotere were less likely to have had a recurrence.

A test, known as Oncotype DX, measures the activity of 21 genes and gives a score to predict a woman’s risk of recurring cancer. Dr. Kathy Albain of Loyola University studied the accuracy of Oncotype DX, which doctors have been using for several years.

Of the 367 women who took the test, those who had low scores did not benefit from chemo after 10 years, while those with high scores recovered well from the drug therapy.

The study was sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and the test’s maker Genomic Health of Redwood City, California and could help spare 18,000 women from chemo every year.

This study "increases our confidence in determining who should avoid chemotherapy despite having positive nodes, and who should get it despite older age," Albain said.

Dr. Albain also said that even among patients considered at low risk, 40 percent relapsed or died within 10 years.

"We need to learn how to better treat those patients. Maybe it's giving them chemo in a different way. But we know the standard chemotherapy isn't helping," Albain said.

Nearly 180,000 women a year are diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. and three quarters of them have tumors that are fueled by estrogen. Appreciatively one third of breast cancer cases have spread to the lymph nodes at the time of diagnosis. That means some 45,000 women a year could potentially benefit from Albain’s research.