Health Buzz: Rare Risk of Cancer After Taking Tamoxifen and Other Health News

It is strange that this "news" is written as though it is a new finding. I read the same results from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center back in 2001. It confirmed that Tamoxifen use decreases the risk of a second breast cancer, but it also found that it may cause a fivefold increased risk of estrogen-receptor (ER)-negative breast cancer (more difficult to treat) and appeared to increase the risk of ER-negative contralateral tumors by nearly 500 percent.

I also haven't seen the mainstream media reporting on the long known increased risk of endrometrial cancer from Tamoxifen use. In 1999 the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center's findings were published in Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The study of women whose breast cancer was treated with Tamoxifen found an overall increased risk of endometrial cancer by about 50 percent. It’s true that women are more likely to die from breast cancer than from endometrial cancer, but I for one want to know all can about the drugs I am asked to take so I can make an informed decision.

Let’s have more inclusive health information when it happens, not 10 years later and after dozens of studies. Let’s also see scientific and medical news results of clinical trials held outside the US (usually ignored by our media). It shouldn’t be that people who want objective and current scientific and medical information must go digging for it on esoteric science posts or hard to find clinical trial reports.

D. Bennett 3:26PM August 26, 2009