Tamoxifen and Raloxifene

Tamoxifen or Raloxifene for Breast Cancer Patients

Here's another example of the kind of thing that I was discussing yesterday when I wrote about new breast cancer drug studies.

The information published yesterday about the role of either tamoxifen or raloxifene in preventing long term recurrence of breast cancer highlights two of the points that I made.

Firstly - be wary of information given from early brief reports from research studies - the early conclusions might not stand up well when the research is properly analysed. This is what happened here. The National Cancer Institute launched a news conference in April 2006 - before the study results had been properly published.

They said that the study would show that raloxifene users had 36 percent fewer uterine cancers and 29 percent fewer blood clots - suggesting that this made Raloxifene a safer choice than Tamoxifen.

Now that the study has been properly published and analysed by breast cancer experts around the world it's clear that there is almost certainly no real difference between the two drugs in either effectiveness or in side effect risk. More work will be done in future but for the moment the evidence suggests that tamoxifen is not any more likely to cause uterus cancer than raloxifene. Blood clots are very very rare with both drugs.

Secondly - always ask yourself if this research actually relates to your own case in any way.
I've read about a dozen or more different newspapers reports on the same research findings. All of them report the study accurately enough - but only one of them mentions that its only women who have a hormone sensitive tumour type that will gain any benefit from either of these drugs. Once again - this is good news for some women with breast cancer.

I know I seem to be banging on a bit about this sort of thing - but it's very easy to become misled by the way that the media covers breast cancer information

Stay well

Gordon