A trial has shown that a drug currently used to treat breast cancer can also cut the possibility of developing the disease by up to 49 per cent.
NHS officials have announced anastrozole will be offered to about 289,000 post-menopausal women in England who are deemed to have moderate to high risk for breast cancer in a bid to prevent them from developing the disease.
Officials have estimated that if 25 per cent of eligible women in England take up the offer – and half of those take the drug for the recommended five years – then 2,000 cases would be prevented over their lifetimes.
Scientists have found that as well as treating breast cancer, anastrozole – a hormone therapy – can also prevent cases.
And the protective effect lasts for years after a woman has stopped taking the drug, officials said.
The drug is usually used to treat breast cancer but has been “repurposed”. It is the first drug to go through NHS England’s Medicines Repurposing Programme.
The moves adds to the NHS’s armoury of preventive breast cancer medication, with tamoxifen and raloxifene already licensed to prevent breast cancer.
Anastrozole was first recommended as a preventive option by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in 2017, however, with the treatment being unlicensed in this use, uptake has remained low.
Now the drug has been licensed by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency as a preventive option as well.
Products that contain cancer-causing chemical – in pictures
“It’s fantastic that this vital risk-reducing option could now help thousands of women and their families avoid the distress of a breast cancer diagnosis,” NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said.
“Allowing more women to live healthier lives, free of breast cancer is truly remarkable, and we hope that licensing anastrozole for a new use today represents the first step to ensuring this risk-reducing option can be accessed by all who could benefit from it.
“This is the first drug to be repurposed though a world-leading new programme to help us realise the full potential of existing medicines in new uses to save and improve more lives on the NHS.
“Thanks to this initiative, we hope that greater access to anastrozole could enable more women to take risk-reducing steps if they’d like to, helping them live without fear of breast cancer.”
Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive at the charity Breast Cancer Now, said: “The extension of anastrozole’s licence to cover it being used as a risk-reducing treatment is a major step forward that will enable more eligible women with a significant family history of breast cancer to reduce their chance of developing the disease.”
The treatment is taken as a 1mg tablet, once a day for five years.
Anastrozole works by cutting down the amount of the hormone oestrogen that a patient’s body makes by blocking an enzyme called aromatase.
The most common side effects of the medicine are hot flushes, feeling weak, pain or stiffness in the joints, arthritis, skin rash, nausea, headache, osteoporosis and depression.
About 47,000 women in England are diagnosed with breast cancer each year.
“Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK so I’m delighted that another effective drug to help to prevent this cruel disease has now been approved,” Health Minister Will Quince said.
“We’ve already seen the positive effect anastrozole can have in treating the disease when it has been detected in post-menopausal women and now we can use it to stop it developing at all in some women.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Abandon
Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay
Translated by Arunava Sinha
Tilted Axis Press
Islamophobia definition
A widely accepted definition was made by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in 2019: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” It further defines it as “inciting hatred or violence against Muslims”.
The years Ramadan fell in May
French business
France has organised a delegation of leading businesses to travel to Syria. The group was led by French shipping giant CMA CGM, which struck a 30-year contract in May with the Syrian government to develop and run Latakia port. Also present were water and waste management company Suez, defence multinational Thales, and Ellipse Group, which is currently looking into rehabilitating Syrian hospitals.
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
The five pillars of Islam
Three tips from La Perle's performers
1 The kind of water athletes drink is important. Gwilym Hooson, a 28-year-old British performer who is currently recovering from knee surgery, found that out when the company was still in Studio City, training for 12 hours a day. “The physio team was like: ‘Why is everyone getting cramps?’ And then they realised we had to add salt and sugar to the water,” he says.
2 A little chocolate is a good thing. “It’s emergency energy,” says Craig Paul Smith, La Perle’s head coach and former Cirque du Soleil performer, gesturing to an almost-empty open box of mini chocolate bars on his desk backstage.
3 Take chances, says Young, who has worked all over the world, including most recently at Dragone’s show in China. “Every time we go out of our comfort zone, we learn a lot about ourselves,” she says.
Innotech Profile
Date started: 2013
Founder/CEO: Othman Al Mandhari
Based: Muscat, Oman
Sector: Additive manufacturing, 3D printing technologies
Size: 15 full-time employees
Stage: Seed stage and seeking Series A round of financing
Investors: Oman Technology Fund from 2017 to 2019, exited through an agreement with a new investor to secure new funding that it under negotiation right now.
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre V8 twin-turbocharged and three electric motors
Power: Combined output 920hp
Torque: 730Nm at 4,000-7,000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch automatic
Fuel consumption: 11.2L/100km
On sale: Now, deliveries expected later in 2025
Price: expected to start at Dh1,432,000
The Baghdad Clock
Shahad Al Rawi, Oneworld
MATCH INFO
Chelsea 0
Liverpool 2 (Mane 50', 54')
Red card: Andreas Christensen (Chelsea)
Man of the match: Sadio Mane (Liverpool)
Pari
Produced by: Clean Slate Films (Anushka Sharma, Karnesh Sharma) & KriArj Entertainment
Director: Prosit Roy
Starring: Anushka Sharma, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Ritabhari Chakraborty, Rajat Kapoor, Mansi Multani
Three stars
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
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The biog
DOB: March 13, 1987
Place of birth: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia but lived in Virginia in the US and raised in Lebanon
School: ACS in Lebanon
University: BSA in Graphic Design at the American University of Beirut
MSA in Design Entrepreneurship at the School of Visual Arts in New York City
Nationality: Lebanese
Status: Single
Favourite thing to do: I really enjoy cycling, I was a participant in Cycling for Gaza for the second time this year
MATCH INFO
Liverpool 4 (Salah (pen 4, 33', & pen 88', Van Dijk (20')
Leeds United 3 (Harrison 12', Bamford 30', Klich 66')
Man of the match Mohamed Salah (Liverpool)
Silent Hill f
Publisher: Konami
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Rating: 4.5/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Dark Souls: Remastered
Developer: From Software (remaster by QLOC)
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Price: Dh199
Ferrari 12Cilindri specs
Engine: naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12
Power: 819hp
Torque: 678Nm at 7,250rpm
Price: From Dh1,700,000
Available: Now
EA Sports FC 26
Publisher: EA Sports
Consoles: PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S
Rating: 3/5
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Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat
Barbara J King, University of Chicago Press
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
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