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The study found that women who had higher expectations of suffering more and worse side-effects before their (Tamoxifen) treatment began did, in fact, experience more after two years of adjuvant hormone therapy…
You have been diagnosed with Ductal Carcioma In-Situ (DCIS). You don’t want to undergo Tamoxifen because of the possible side effects. But then again, you want to reduce your risk of breast cancer now that you have been diagnosed with “pre-breast cancer.” So what can you do?
The answer is to balance your goals of both quality of life with quantity of life. Here’s how.
According to the first study linked and excerpted below, expecting severe side effects from Tamoxifen therapy generally leads to experiencing worse side effects. I’m sure that there are many different biological and/or psychological reasons for this, but for the sake of this post, I am taking the study below at face value. If counseling, for example, helps, then by all means, undergo counseling.
According to the second study linked and excerpted below, reducing the standard daily dose of Tamoxifen of 20 mg a day for five years to 5 mg a day for only 3 years halves the risk of “new breast cancer events.” For those women who experience more severe side effects, dramatically reducing the amount of toxicity you undergo can dramatically reduce the side effects as well.
Further, you can undergo evidence-based, non-toxic therapies that will further reduce your risk of breast cancer. Nutrition, supplementation and lifestyle therapies discussed in the video have been shown by studies to reduce the risk of breast cancer.
To learn more about DCIS and the evidence-based therapies that can help you prevent its spread into invasive breast cancer, please watch the video below:
“A study of women receiving hormone therapies such as tamoxifen as part of their treatment for breast cancer has found that the number and seriousness of side effects they experienced were influenced by their expectations. The study found that women who had higher expectations of suffering more and worse side-effects before their treatment began did, in fact, experience more after two years of adjuvant hormone therapy...
The study, which is published in the leading cancer journal Annals of Oncology [1] today (Tuesday), found that women who had higher expectations of suffering more and worse side-effects before their treatment began did, in fact, experience more after two years of adjuvant hormone therapy. They experienced nearly twice the number of side-effects than did women with positive expectations or who thought the effects would not be too bad.
The researchers say that their findings are important because women may stop taking their adjuvant hormone treatment if they experience too many side-effects and worse health-related quality of life; this, in turn, can affect the success of treatment and survival. However, if expectations can predict the risk of experiencing side-effects, then interventions such as counselling could lower the risk and, therefore, improve adherence to medication…
“Daily use of low-dose (5 mg) tamoxifen (multiple brands) for a shorter-than-usual treatment period (3 years) for patients with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and other forms of noninvasive breast cancer halved the recurrence of new breast cancer events in comparison with placebo, a new Italian study indicates…
Tamoxifen is typically prescribed post surgery at a dosage of 20 mg/day for 5 years for DCIS and these other conditions… Tamoxifen was developed in the 1960s, but the minimal effective dose has never been established…
In the new 500-patient trial, 5.5% patients in the low-dose tamoxifen arm had either experienced disesase recurrence or had new disease, including invasive disease, compared with 11.3% in the placebo arm…
“When we compare our low-dose tamoxifen data with results from the NSABP B-24 and NSABP-P1 trials of tamoxifen given at 20 mg per day, we see comparable risk reduction and significantly reduced serious adverse events, respectively,” said De Censi in a press statement at the meeting…”
