FRIDAY, April 3, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- While uncommon, use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) instead of traditional therapies is associated with lower survival time in females with breast cancer, according to a study published online March 2 in JAMA Network Open.
Oluwaseun F. Ayoade, M.D., from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues examined the association of CAM with survival in females with breast cancer. Analysis included ~2.16 million female patients with breast cancer identified from the National Cancer Database (2011 through 2021).
The researchers found that most patients (97.6 percent) received traditional therapy, <0.1 percent received CAM alone, <0.1 percent received a combination of CAM and traditional therapies, and 2.3 percent received no treatment. Patients treated with CAM alone (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 3.67) or no treatment (aHR, 3.53) had the highest risks for five-year mortality, compared with patients treated with traditional therapies. Additionally, patients who received a combination of traditional therapies and CAM were less likely to receive endocrine therapy (40.7 versus 65.2 percent in stage II) and radiation (59.5 versus 36.6 percent in stage II) versus patients treated exclusively with traditional therapies. The combination of traditional therapies and CAM also was associated with a higher mortality compared with being treated exclusively with traditional therapy (aHR, 1.45).
"Inviting patients to share their interest in CAM may present an opportunity to enhance shared decision-making, particularly as patients may be planning to forego traditional treatments," the authors write.