According to a new study, the anti estrogen drug Tamoxifen could help reduce a woman’s risk of dying from lung cancer. Doctors however clarify that this drug is not something that can be used to prevent or treat lung cancer.
As many as a hundred and fifty thousand people die annually from lung cancer each year in the United States, making this kind of cancer the biggest killer and the progression of this disease is impacted by certain hormones, it has been suggested.
Certain kinds of breast cancers need estrogen to grow, and tamoxifen is been successfully administered in these cases to restrict the growth of the breast tumor.
Conversely it has been documented that women who are taking hormone replacement therapy wherein they are administered estrogen dosages, have a higher breast cancer risk.
So doctors were able to arrive at the tamoxifen treatment, which helps starve the tumor of estrogen and lower the risk of dying from the cancer.
According to Dr. Apar Ganti, who studies lung cancer at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, more research is needed but this provides more evidence of the role of estrogen in lung cancer as well.
