African American women and Caucasian women, who take tamoxifen for prevention of breast cancer recurrence, derive the same benefits and share the similar risks of blood clots, as per a new study that was published in the recent issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Depending on various factors between 2 and 15 percent of women, who were diagnosed with breast cancer will develop a second breast cancer in the opposite breast. Tamoxifen has shown to decrease the risk of breast cancer on the opposite breast by 47 percent. Clinical trials that led to this conclusion were largely in white women and it was not clear till now if these results are applicable to African American women. Use of tamoxifen is also associated with increased risk of thrombo-embolic events like deep venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and stroke. It was also not clear that this information derived from the previous studies was applicable to African American women, who have much higher risk factors in terms of cardiovascular disorders and diabetes.
McCaskill-Stevens and colleagues studied a total of 20,000 women who participated in the NSABP clinical trials and found that tamoxifen was equally effective in prevention of breast cancer in both African American and Caucasian women. They also found that both of these ethnic groups had similar risks of thrombo-embolism despite increased incidence of other risk factors for the African American population. |
