Side Effects

Bone loss is considered to be a silent side effect of breast cancer treatment.

In it bones become fragile and thin, bone density loss can lead to bone breaks, loss of height, severe back pain, permanent disability and even death if serious spinal or vertebral fractures occur.

The reason that leads to bone loss or bone density loss is the effect of chemotherapy on bone marrow blood cells, a drop in estrogen levels following chemotherapy and taking aromatase inhibitors .

As chemotherapy leads to rapidly-dividing cancer cells. Thus it damages blood cells in bone marrow tissues and prevents new ones from forming.

The effect on bone marrow depends on the type of drug treatment, dosage, length of treatment, interval between treatments and physical condition of the patient.

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