LONDON - There is now intense pressure on the NHS to deliver a new breast cancer drug that apparently increases the survival rate if given two years after Tamoxifen.
The drug Arimidex is currently available for selective use after surgery. It belongs to a class of drugs called aromatase inhibitors and evidence is slowly emerging that it can indeed save lives besides preventing the cancer from returning.
These findings are in the form of data from three international drug trials that had more than 4,000 women as participants. These trials found that there were 29 percent fewer deaths in women who has started taking Arimidex two years after they started on Tamoxifen.
The drug prevents the body from developing extra store houses for the female sex hormone estrogen, which is vital for the progress of breast cancer. In the UK, the drug is available for £68 a month, making it eight times as expensive as Tamoxifen, which has been the main drug for breast cancer over the last two decades.
In Britain about 32,000 postmenopausal women fall a victim to breast cancer each year and experts believe that Arimidex may be more useful to them then the usual Tamoxifen. "Survival is the ultimate goal in the treatment of early breast cancer, and these results provide compelling evidence that anastrozole has the potential to save the lives of significantly more cancer patients who are post-menopausal and hormone-receptor positive," says Jeffrey Tobias, the Professor of Cancer Medicine at University College London Hospitals.
Consequently, cancer support groups are putting huge pressure on the NHS to broaden the access for this drug. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has only just begun its study into the effectiveness of the drug and clearance to use it generally may only come about early next year.
That is why charity organizations and cancer support groups are demanding that the drug be fast-tracked for use. Health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, who intervened in the case of Herceptin is now under pressure to do something about this new drug as well.
Posted
on : Sun, 11 Dec 2005 20:20 GMT | General News
By : Anne Philips
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