Chemotherapy remains a first line treatment for cancer. Unfortunately, it also stops a woman's ovaries from producing eggs.

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Women are also at risk of becoming infertile because of the expensive radioactive treatment.

An encouraging new approach announced in a clinical study by an international team of researchers that "freezes" ovaries for a few months might help young women have babies after chemotherapy.

The study's results were revealed last week at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago. The study is based on an ongoing clinical trial designed to help preserve a woman's fertility during chemotherapy.

The treatment essentially stops the ovaries from producing eggs while the chemotherapy is working. It then allows a woman's fertility to resume. The results of the treatment surprised researchers who were not sure the experiment would work.

Clinical researchers wanted to know if the drug goserelin (brand name Zoladex) could preserve the fertility of hormone-negative cancer patients. The goal of the clinical trial was to temporarily halt ovarian function and then assess it two years after treatment.

Goserelin shuts down the ovaries and basically "hides" the ovaries from chemotherapy drugs that tend to destroy the most actively dividing cells. These rapidly dividing cells are the hallmarks of cancer.

Put in another way, goserelin suppresses ovarian functions or puts the ovaries at rest. The drug is normally prescribed to women with advanced hormone-positive breast cancer to put them into menopause thereby halting estrogen production that can spur cancer growth.

Previous studies revealed high rates of return of menstrual function but there have been no conclusive trials looking at ovarian function over the long term.

What the new trial wanted to prove was that inactive ovaries are less sensitive to chemotherapy effects.

Over 250 women between the ages of 18 and 49 participated in the trial. All were given standard chemotherapy, but half received goserelin in their treatments.

Two years later, 12 women who did not get goserelin, or 11 percent, got pregnant. But 22 (or 21 percent) of those who took the drug became pregnant.

Dr. Halle Moore of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio told ASCO that 30 babies so far have been born and that eight women are still pregnant.