Conflicting data on stroke risk and tamoxifen use
Whether tamoxifen is associated with an increased risk of stroke remains debatable following publication of two recent studies.
The first, conducted by researchers from Kaiser Permanente Southern California,
was a case-control study of women diagnosed with breast cancer between
1980 and 2000. Of 11,045 women treated for breast cancer, 179 had a stroke
in the years after treatment. These women were matched to two other women
diagnosed with breast cancer at the same time. The researchers found
that tamoxifen use was not associated with an increased risk of first
stroke (odds ratio 1.0, 95 per cent confidence interval 0.6 to 1.6) (Journal
of the National Cancer Institute 2004;96:1528).
However, a second study, published in Neurology (2004;63:1230), warns
that tamoxifen is associated with a slight increase in stroke risk, in
particular ischaemic stroke. Researchers from Duke University, Durham,
North Carolina, examined data from nine trials involving 39,601 subjects,
19,954 of whom were treated with tamoxifen. During follow-up, ischaemic
strokes occurred in 0.71 per cent of women treated with tamoxifen and
0.39 per cent of controls. For any stroke the values were 1.06 per cent
for tamoxifen and 0.76 per cent for controls. |
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