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By Kirsten Houmann, Ivanhoe Health Correspondent
ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A drug approved for osteoporosis prevention and treatment may also prevent breast and other types of cancer.
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A study at the University of California at San Diego found post-menopausal women who took the drug raloxifene (Evista) were 55 percent less likely to develop invasive, estrogen-receptor (ER) positive breast cancer compared with women who did not take the drug. The drug reduced this risk for at least 8 years regardless of age, prior hormone use or baseline breast cancer risk.
This is great because a lot of women have bone issues, and may be at a high risk for getting an invasive breast cancer, Dr. Black said. This medicine is a safe medicine that can prevent breast cancer.
Raloxifene is a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM), which means it has estrogen-like effects on tissues like bone, but anti-estrogen effects on tissues like breast tissue. Most post-menopausal women with breast cancer have invasive, ER positive breast cancer. When breast cancer is invasive, it has started to break through normal breast tissue barriers and invade surrounding areas. ER positive, or hormone responsive, means the breast cancer grows when it comes in contact with estrogen.
We now have medicines, such as Evista, that can sit on that estrogen receptor and block that receptor so that estrogen cannot get on [it], Dalliah Mashon Black, M.D., a breast surgeon at the Hoffberger Breast Center at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, who is not associated with the study, told Ivanhoe. That, in turn, kills the cancer cells.
The study was conducted as a follow-up to the Raloxifene Use for the Heart Trial (RUTH), the worlds largest study of women and heart disease to date. The trial found raloxifene did not protect against heart disease, but did reduce the risk of invasive breast cancer by 44 percent.
According to the National Cancer Institute, 182,460 new cases of breast cancer in women will be diagnosed in 2008.
SOURCE: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2008; published online June 10th
If this story or any other Ivanhoe story has impacted your life or prompted you or someone you know to seek or change treatments, please let us know by contacting Lindsay Braun at lbraun@ivanhoe.com.
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