A study conducted by the University of London as found that Tamoxifen – a drug that blocks the effects of estrogen in the area, and costs just a few cents per day – said that hundreds of thousands of British women were not being the offered the drug. Authors of the study Havecalled for a “major cultural shift” in the preventative treatement of cancer.
Professor Jack Cuzick, the study’s lead author told The Telegraph in the UK,
“If you’ve got risk factors for cardiovascular disease, you treat those and you prevent heart attacks and you have a dramatic impact on deaths.
“That concept and belief has not really got into cancer at all.”
The findings of the research, which were presented at a Breast Cancer Symposium in Texas, followed 7000 women over two decades. Half were given tamoxifen for five years, and the new data shows that this group had a 29 per cent reduction in breast cancer rates.
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As the Telegraph pointed out, women would need to evaluate the potential side effects of the drug – which can include clots and cancer of the lining of the uterus – against the benefits.
Preventative measures for breast cancer came into the spotlight in 2013 when Angelina Jolie revealed that she had a double mastectomy after discovering that she had the defective BRCA1 gene.
