More tamoxifen may be better.

So you have been taking tamoxifen to prevent your breast cancer from coming back and are now approaching the 5-year mark. Time to stop? After all that was the deal your oncologist promised. And, enough hot flashes and worry about uterine cancer and blood clots developing. But things have changed. Your doc may recommend you keep taking the drug another 5 years. The good news is that your chance of having your cancer come back is reduced by around 25 percent. That is according to a new study just published in the journal Lancet (Mar 9 2013). There are lots of studies that show that 5 years treatment with tamoxifen is better than 2 years in lowering the chances of recurrence and death from early breast cancer, but it has been hard to get a study together of 10 years. Finally it has been done. A large team of investigators from around the world, led by the Oxford Trialists Group (believe me, the best) entered nearly 7000 women into this trial. Half were given tamoxifen for 5 years and the other half took the drug for 10 years. Then came the waiting to see what would happen. Ten years after the women started taking their tamoxifen, there was very little difference in recurrence rate between women who stopped at 5 years and those continuing to take their meds for the full ten years. But by 15 years, there were more recurrences in the 5-yer group and more deaths. At the 15-year mark, 15 percent of the women in the 5-year group had died; but only 12 percent of the women in the 1...
Source: Dr.Kattlove's Cancer Blog - Category: Oncologists Source Type: blogs