Women with an increased risk of breast cancer don't have to helplessly wait and wonder if they'll find that dreaded tumor. They have the choice to pursue a preventive course of action. The first national breast cancer prevention trial sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) proved the drug tamoxifen cut the risk of breast cancer in half for women at high risk.1 Following this finding the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of tamoxifen as a preventive measure in October 1998.
Now the second national breast cancer prevention study, the Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene (STAR), is recruiting 22,000 postmenopausal women at increased risk for breast cancer across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada. This constitutes the first large randomized clinical trial comparing the efficacy of raloxifene, an osteoporosis drug, to tamoxifen for the reduction of breast cancer.
Tamoxifen is the first clinically available selective estrogen ...
