Osteoporosis drug and breast cancer

What is osteoporosis? What causes osteoporosis? Breast cancer treatments and bone health 4. How is osteoporosis diagnosed?

A cheap and widely available drug used to treat osteoporosis could prevent a thousand breast cancer deaths a year, a study has found. Doctors said the findings will have an immediate impact on patient care with bisphosponates being recommended for all postmenopausal women with breast cancer. The drugs had little effect on younger women who had not gone through the menopause. The researchers pulled together medical data on nearly 19, women who took part in 26 separate bisphosphonate trials. Women benefited from the drug regardless of the type of bisphosphonate they took, the size of their breast tumour, and whether or not it was hormone sensitive. The drugs are cheap, at only 5p a day per patient, because they have come off patent and can be manufactured as generics.

June 15, Web posted at: p. From Medical Correspondent Rhonda Rowland. Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco UCSF set out to look at the ability of the osteoporosis drug raloxifene to protect against bone fractures.

Background: Aromatase inhibitors AIs have improved the prognosis for breast cancer survivors and are now standard of care for postmenopausal women with hormone receptor positive early stage breast cancer. One side-effect, however, is a decrease in bone mineral density BMD and increased fracture risk. Since hormone replacement therapy HRT is contraindicated in these women, one prevention option is exercise combined with vitamin D and calcium. The effect of this intervention on drug-induced osteoporosis is unknown.