Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Research backs drug raloxifene in battle against breast cancer
April 20, 2010
By Mark Roth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When Kathleen Mausteller learned she had a chance to join a major breast cancer prevention study in 1999, she jumped at the chance.
Her older sister had breast cancer. Her younger sister had died of it. So had two aunts and her grandmother.
So, even though the Shaler woman lived a healthy lifestyle and had never missed work because of illness, she knew the genetic tendencies in her family would have no respect for that.
Today, she has good reason to feel justified in her decision.
Not only is she cancer-free herself, but the latest report on the study she participated in shows that the drug she was taking, raloxifene, is almost as good at preventing breast cancer as its better known cousin, tamoxifen, but has far fewer side effects.
The update of the international Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene, known as STAR, was presented Monday at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Washington, D.C., by Dr. D. Lawrence Wickerham, an Allegheny General Hospital doctor who is associate director of the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project, which oversaw the trial.
To read more, visit the Post-Gazette website.
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