Enzyme fighter works as well as tamoxifen
By Nathan Seppa
A drug that physicians usually prescribe for breast cancer only after the front-line tumor fighter tamoxifen has lost its punch works just as well as that better-known drug, a study of postmenopausal women shows.
The drug, anastrozole, even surpasses tamoxifen in fighting certain kinds of breast cancers–those with estrogen-dependent tumor cells–and causes fewer side effects overall, researchers report in the Nov. 1 Cancer.
Many studies have implicated the female hormone estrogen in breast cancer. Anastrozole disables an enzyme called aromatase, which the body needs to manufacture estrogen, whereas tamoxifen fights cancer by blocking tumor cells from responding to the hormone.