Does the drug tamoxifen prevent breast cancer in women at high risk of contracting the disease? Now that two European studies have cast doubts on positive results from an earlier American trial, doctors seem further than ever from the answer.
Researchers at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London and the European Institute of Oncology in Milan report in The Lancet (vol 352, p 93 and p 98) that tamoxifen performs no better as a preventive medicine than does a placebo. In May, however, the larger American Breast Cancer Prevention Trial was stopped when evidence emerged of a 45 per cent cut in breast cancer incidence among women given tamoxifen.
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