CHICAGO — A commonly used drug can help young women with breast cancer retain the ability to have babies, apparently protecting their ovaries from the damage caused by chemotherapy, researchers reported here on Friday.

The treatment could provide a new option for dealing with one of the painful dilemmas faced by young cancer patients — that doing the utmost to save their lives might impair or even ruin their fertility.

Researchers said the drug, goserelin, which temporarily shuts down the ovaries, appears to protect women from the more permanent premature menopause that can be induced by chemotherapy. In a clinical trial, women who were given goserelin injections along with chemotherapy had less ovarian failure and gave birth to more babies than women receiving only the chemotherapy.

“Premenopausal women beginning chemotherapy for early breast cancer should consider this new option to prevent premature ovarian death,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Halle Moore of the Cleveland Clinic, said at a news conference here at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.