Drug That Combats Bone Loss Reduces Breast Cancer Risk, Researchers Report
From Times staff and wire reports
Raloxifene, a drug intended to combat bone loss, reduces the risk of breast cancer by 76% in post-menopausal women, doctors from UC San Francisco reported today in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
Raloxifene belongs to a group of drugs that mimic estrogen in some parts of the body and may therefore have some of estrogen’s benefits. In contrast to tamoxifen, an estrogen inhibitor that also decreases the risk of invasive breast cancer, raloxifene shows no associated increase in risk for endometrial cancer.
The study, which monitored more than 7,700 women for an average of 40 months, also showed that raloxifene decreases bone turnover, increases bone density and decreases the risk of vertebral fractures.
