When my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer several years ago, the biopsy results showed that her type of breast cancer was not estrogen fuelled. It was incredibly upsetting to hear that news because it meant that my mother would not benefit from taking the well known anti-cancer drug, tamoxifen, which would have been given to her after her radiation treatments (because of her age, she wasn’t a good candidate for chemo given its toxicity).

Tamoxifen is known to prevent a recurrence of breast cancer by suppressing endogenous estrogen. You take it every day for 5 years. In fact, it’s even given to young women who have not been diagnosed with breast cancer but who have a strong family history of breast cancer. It’s well tolerated and has a great track record in preventing a recurrence. It’s a great drug to use in our arsenal of medication to treat the # 2 cancer killer of women (lung cancer is #1).

So perhaps you can imagine my shock when I read the recent findings published online in the July 2010 issue of the  Journal of Clinical Oncology which reported that only 49% of women  (whose breast cancers were positive for the estrogen or progesterone receptors) completed the 5 years of therapy. The remaining women simply stopped taking the medication with a shocking 13% of patients nonadherent right from their first refill.

Even more shocking was that the age group most likely to stop taking tamoxifen were women under 40.

If you think that this study is an anomaly, you would be wrong. Two previous studies of tamoxifen also found that young women were likely to discontinue their medication. As the researchers reported, “young adults with cancer may be a particularly vulnerable group”. Other studies show discontinuation rates between 30%-50%. Why this occurs was not made clear in the study.

So please, if you know someone with breast cancer who has stopped taking tamoxifen or the other aromatase inhibitors, inquire why and urge them to speak with their oncologist.

For an abstract about the study, follow this link - from  here you can download the complete report in PDF format if desired.

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