BMJ 2014;349:g7596 doi: 10.1136/bmj.g7596 (Published 12 December 2014)
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Research News
RESEARCH NEWS Tamoxifen reduces breast cancer rate in at-risk healthy women by nearly a third, finds study Zosia Kmietowicz The BMJ
Taking tamoxifen for five years has been found to reduce the rate of breast cancer by 29% among healthy women at high risk of developing the disease, a long term study has found.
Between 1992 and 2001 7154 women aged 35-70 with an increased risk of breast cancer, primarily because they had a family history, were enrolled into the International Breast Cancer Intervention Study I and were randomly allocated to receive either tamoxifen (3579) or placebo (3575) for five years. Researchers continued to track the health of all participants after treatment stopped and have published the latest findings in the Lancet Oncology.1 They found that after an average follow-up of 16 years 251 of the 3579 women who took tamoxifen (7%) and 350 of the 3575 women in the placebo group (9.8%) developed breast cancer, making breast cancer 29% less likely to develop among those who took tamoxifen (hazard ratio 0·71, 95% confidence interval 0·60 to 0·83, P
Page 1 of 1
Research News
RESEARCH NEWS Tamoxifen reduces breast cancer rate in at-risk healthy women by nearly a third, finds study Zosia Kmietowicz The BMJ
Taking tamoxifen for five years has been found to reduce the rate of breast cancer by 29% among healthy women at high risk of developing the disease, a long term study has found.
Between 1992 and 2001 7154 women aged 35-70 with an increased risk of breast cancer, primarily because they had a family history, were enrolled into the International Breast Cancer Intervention Study I and were randomly allocated to receive either tamoxifen (3579) or placebo (3575) for five years. Researchers continued to track the health of all participants after treatment stopped and have published the latest findings in the Lancet Oncology.1 They found that after an average follow-up of 16 years 251 of the 3579 women who took tamoxifen (7%) and 350 of the 3575 women in the placebo group (9.8%) developed breast cancer, making breast cancer 29% less likely to develop among those who took tamoxifen (hazard ratio 0·71, 95% confidence interval 0·60 to 0·83, P
