Posted by Carrie on September 30, 2009, 9:53 am
I just read an article at www.naturalnews.com that scares me. Here's a part of it. It was a study of 1103 breast cancer survivors with ER+ cancers. I hope I can find the whole research paper from the article in Cancer Research, as well as any criticism of the study that may be published. If anyone reads more about this, please let us know.
A new study by Christopher Li, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center just published online in the journal Cancer Research seems to reveal the belief that tamoxifen protects against breast cancer is only partially correct. The drug may also cause certain breast cancers.
Yes, breast-cancer patients who receive long-term estrogen-blocker tamoxifen therapy have a 60 percent reduction in their incidence of a second, ER positive breast cancer -- a common type of breast cancer which tends not to be aggressive and is responsive to estrogen-blocking therapy. But the new research shows tamoxifen increases the risk of the women developing a second and far more dangerous type of breast cancer by a stunning 440 percent.
This type of ER negative cancer develops as a malignant tumor in the breast opposite, or contralateral, to the initial tumor. It is an aggressive, difficult-to-treat type of cancer with a poor prognosis.
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