Women at high risk to be given breast cancer drug
Half a million healthy women at high risk of getting breast cancer will for the first time be offered a cheap course of NHS drugs to help lessen their chances of contracting the disease.
Women with a family history of the cancer should be offered a five-year course of daily pills which could reduce their chances of getting breast cancer by 40 per cent, said the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice).
Tamoxifen or raloxifene will be offered to women aged 35 or over as an alternative to preventative surgery, chosen by celebrities including Angelina Jolie (pictured above) and Sharon Osbourne, and is available at a low cost.
Preventing people from developing the cancer will also save the NHS huge amounts of money in treating patients at a time when its budget is under considerable pressure, the health regulator’s new guidelines also argue.
More importantly for women, they don’t have to go through the stress and trauma of a diagnosis, radiotherapy, potentially chemotherapy – Professor Gareth Evans
One in five women with breast cancer have a family history of the disease, meaning that it affected their mother, sister or aunt.
Tamoxifen has been used for 40 years to treat breast cancer in the UK, while raloxifene is currently licensed to help treat osteoporosis in women who have gone through the menopause. Neither drug is currently licensed as a preventative treatment in this country, although tamoxifen is used in this way in the United States.
The treatment will be offered to women aged 35 and over deemed to have a high risk (more than 30 per cent) or moderate risk (17 – 30 per cent) of contracting breast cancer.
‘Game changer’
Dr Caitlin Palframan, assistant head of policy at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said the guidance would allow at-risk women to make an informed choice about their future.
“We believe that this guideline is a game changer for people with a family history of breast cancer,” she said.
“In fact for breast cancer overall it’s a historic step for prevention. We think more women will have more options to reduce their risk, which ultimately means we will prevent more breast cancer cases.”
Professor Gareth Evans, a consultant in clinical genetics at St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester who helped to develop the guidelines, said it was “a major breakthrough” for women.
“Tamoxifen is extremely cost effective, that’s because it’s extremely cheap.. .and treating someone with breast cancer costs many thousands of pounds,” he said.
“So this treatment is potentially not just cost-effective but cost saving to the NHS and more importantly for women they don’t have to go through the stress and trauma of a diagnosis, radiotherapy, potentially chemotherapy.
“So it’s a major breakthrough for women that they are going to be able to be offered this treatment in the future.”
But Professor Evans said women whose risk of contracting breast cancer was 80 per cent or above – like Ms Jolie – may still opt for surgery, which is more effective than drugs.
Roughly 50,000 women and 400 men are diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK every year, according to Nice figures.
The updated guideline also calls for more men and women to be tested for genetic mutations that cause cancer and can be passed down through families.
People with a 10 per cent risk of developing the cancer should be offered genetic testing, half the risk for which it is currently offered.