Our Year in Review series highlights the major medical news stories of 2011. The announcement of study results showing a 65% decrease in first breast cancers among postmenopausal women at moderate or high risk of the disease brought expectations that more women would be placed on chemoprevention. Here, again, is the original article, first published on June 4. In a companion article, you'll find out what's happened since.
CHICAGO -- Make room, tamoxifen: The aromatase inhibitor exemestane (Aromasin) prevents first breast cancers in moderate- to high-risk postmenopausal women, according to randomized trial results.
Exemestane reduced the annual incidence of invasive breast cancer by a relative 65% compared with placebo (0.19% versus 0.55%, P=0.002), Paul E. Goss, MD, PhD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston, and colleagues found.
The number of patients who needed to treat to prevent one breast cancer with exemestane therapy was 94 in three years. That number was projected to drop to 26 in five years, the group reported here at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting and simultaneously online in the New England Journal of Medicine.
By comparison, five years of tamoxifen reduces breast cancer incidence by about 50% in high-risk women, while the same strategy with sister drug raloxifene (Evista) cuts risk by 38%./.../
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