A weekly round-up of Google Alerts on the latest medical developments in Breast Cancer. I was puzzled as to why there was such a surge this week, and realised that it was due to studies being released at the San Antonio Breast Cancer symposium 2013 (http://www.sabcs.org/PressReleases/Documents/2013/b3c6acef3fe26baa.pdf)
There’s fantastic news that the aromatase inhibitor, anastrazole (aka Arimidex), can cut the risk of breast cancer in women by 50% and with fewer side-effects than drugs like tamoxifen. But please note (and this is not being made clear in newspaper headlines), anastrozole is usually only used in post-menopausal women (because the ovaries in premenopausal women produce too much aromatase for the inhibitors to block effectively). There’s also little discussion on the side-effects which may make it difficult for women to comply with taking the medication.
The FDA has issued a warning about nipple aspirate tests being used as a substitute for mammograms. The message is: they’re not reliable, and don’t. They sound awfully like thermograms to me – I had a thermogram done about 3 days’ after my initial diagnosis, and the practitioner who conducted the test told me that without the mammogram, he wouldn’t have diagnosed breast cancer from my thermogram. (part of the issue is that the thermogram machines in the UK are not sophisticated enough to give the detailed results required for such diagnosis).
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BisforBananasCisforCancer 