In brief

Prolonged tamoxifen offers benefits: Women with oestrogen positive breast cancer benefit from taking tamoxifen for more than five years, and the advantages increase over time, a study has found.1 Tamoxifen reduced the risk of a recurrence of breast cancer after nine years (580 of 3468 women who took tamoxifen for more than five years versus 672 of 3485 women who stopped tamoxifen at five years; P<0.01), with a rate ratio of 0.75 (95% confidence interval 0.66 to 0.86). Longer treatment also reduced breast cancer mortality (392 versus 443 deaths after recurrence; P=0.05), with a rate ratio after nine years of 0.86 (0.75 to 0.97). More …