Reading the Effect of Tea Leaves…and Beating Genetic Fatalism in Breast Cancer

The recent news about Angelina Jolie getting a prophylactic double mastectomy is both sad and encouraging. Women, and their physicians, are becoming more aware of individual breast cancer risk. They are willing to use any available treatments to reduce that risk, and promote health. Tamoxifen is a breast cancer drug success story. It works by competing with estradiol for estrogen receptor protein. Thereby inhibiting the Erα (estrogen receptor). See http://www.drugs.com/pro/tamoxifen.html Tamoxifen 1st significantly improves survival.  2nd reduces recurrence.  3rd reduces the incidence of breast cancer in high risk women. The drawback is that the tumors need to be overexpressing estrogen receptor, or ER+. Cancer that is “estrogen receptor negative”, or ER- now has a comparably worse prognosis. This is because … Continue reading →