Women with early-stage breast cancer who are treated with 5 years of tamoxifen have a lower rate of death from coronary heart disease than women who receive the drug for only 2 years, according to a new study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Between 1983 and 1992, 4,610 Swedish patients with early-stage breast cancer were randomly assigned to be treated with 2 or 5 years of adjuvant tamoxifen therapy. Among those who received 5 years of therapy, all-cause mortality, breast cancer-specific mortality, and the incidence of contralateral breast cancer were reduced. However, the incidence of endometrial cancer was higher compared with those women who received only 2 years of therapy.

After an additional year of patient recruitment and a median of 10.6 years of follow-up, Bo Nordenskjöld, M.D., Ph.D., of Linköping University Hospital in Sweden, and colleagues report that 2.1% of patients in the 5-year group and 3.5% of patients in the 2-year group died from coronary heart disease.

SOURCE:
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, November 2, 2005