Who Benefits from Strategies to Prevent Breast Cancer?

Strategies using tamoxifen, raloxifene, or aromatase inhibitors to reduce risks for developing breast cancer in high-risk women have been available for two decades, but relatively few eligible women choose to use these drugs. The eligibility criteria for chemoprevention trials can identify a very large potential population of women for these strategies, but identifying the women who are most likely to benefit remains a challenge. Now, investigators address this issue by reexamining data from the placebo-controlled, manufacturer-funded IBIS-II prevention study, which demonstrated that taking anastrozole for 5 years was associated with a 50% reduction in the odds of developing invasive breast cancer in 3864 postmenopausal women (age range, 40…