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Sunday, February 23, 2003In the current study, Tan-Chiu and her colleagues reviewed the records of more than 13,000 women at high risk of breast cancer, who participated in an earlier trial designed to study the benefits of the drug in preventing the disease. The researchers discovered that women who took tamoxifen for an average of 49 months were 28% less likely to develop benign breast disease than women taking an inactive drug. Moreover, taking tamoxifen reduced the need for biopsy by 29% among the study participants, the authors note in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. This is an important benefit of the drug, Tan-Chiu said in an interview. Going through a biopsy is often not a pleasant experience, she noted, and waiting for the result to see if you have breast cancer can be excruciating. "All that is nerve-wracking," she said. "If you can reduce that, it's wonderful." Except that tamoxifen isn’t without side effects. In addition to increasing the risk of blood clots, and uterine cancer and causing hot flashes, there’s some evidence that it might be associated with higher death rates. That’s a chance that’s worth taking if your goal is to avoid the recurrence of cancer, but not if it’s just to alleviate the minor inconvenience of tender and lumpy breasts. The authors suggest that the drug lowers the need for biopsy, but it fails to tell us how many women with benign breast disease undergo biopsies each year, and how that compares to those who take tamoxifen. The study's abstract doesn't give any more complete information, but just repeats those "percentage differences" that must have been in the press release. Not surprisingly, one of the study’s co-authors is financed by the makers of tamoxifen. posted by Sydney on 2/23/2003 02:44:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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