Nearly 300,000 women at high risk of developing breast cancer will have access to a drug that could halve their risk. All at the expense of the UK National Health Service. The drug is considered a “major step forward” in the fight against the disease. Specifically, the drug, known as anastrozole, is being made available to women who are more at risk because they have reached menopause and already have a family history of the most common form of cancer in Britain. The drug will be used as a 1 mg tablet once a day for five years. Amanda Pritchard, chief executive of NHS England, told a press conference: “It’s fantastic that this vital risk-reducing option can now help thousands of women and their families avoid the discomfort of a breast cancer diagnosis.”
The new frontier in prevention
Pritchard, who made the decision public, argued that this choice showed “remarkable” potential to reduce the number of people who will get the disease. According to The Guardian newspaper, approximately 56 thousand women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year in the UK. This is around 150 per day. Although survival rates have increased thanks to research, approximately 11,500 people die from this disease every year. Postmenopausal women, especially those who see one or more relatives developing breast cancer at a young age, will be able to access treatment. First, they will need to see their family doctor, who will refer them to a breast cancer clinic based on their family history. To be precise, Public Health Britain plans to help 289,000 women at medium or high risk of breast cancer. The prevention initiative using anastrozole represents a potential new frontier in the fight against one of the UK’s and the world’s deadliest diseases.
Side effects
This is the first time that a drug already used to treat a condition has been “repurposed” to prevent the same disease. However, the drug has a number of side effects; these include hot flashes, fatigue, pain or stiffness in joints, and arthritis. Nausea, headache, skin rashes, brittle bones were also noted. Possible side effects include depression. Therefore, it is not certain whether those who start taking the drug will continue to do so for the entire 5-year cycle. But the health service calculated that even if just a quarter of the 289,000 women who applied for the initiative decided to take the pill, at least 2,000 would not have the disease.
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Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
