- A drug used as a breast cancer treatment has been authorized for use as a preventative drug in post-menopausal women at high risk of breast cancer, in England, United Kingdom.
- Previous research shows that this drug can reduce the risk of breast cancer by 49%.
- The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency hopes this decision increases awareness among high risk women about the possibility of using this preventive treatment.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the United Kingdom has recently authorized the breast cancer drug anastrozole as a preventative medication.
The official press release describes it as “a hormone treatment used for breast cancer in post-menopausal women.”
This authorization means that women at high risk of breast cancer will be able to access a 5-year course of the medicine shown to reduce the risk of developing this cancer.
The MHRA decision was based on the results of the IBIS-II study, published in
Lead author Prof. Jack Cuzick, head of the Cancer Prevention unit and John Snow professor of epidemiology at Queen Mary, University of London said the trial was carried out because specialists acknowledged that women treated for breast cancer in one breast were less likely to have a recurrence of their cancer after taking this drug.
“Basically, the first data came by looking at new cancers in the opposite breast and treatment trials,” he said in an interview with Medical News Today.
The IBIS-II trial ran from February 2, 2003, to January 31, 2012, across 153 breast cancer treatment centers in 18 countries and recruited 3,864…
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