The U.K. just cleared a drug to prevent breast cancer. U.S. women may not know it’s already an option
Doctors in the U.S. have long prescribed preventive drugs for people at risk of developing breast cancer — but women in the U.S. may not know the option even exists.
The news that the U.K. has approved a preventive drug for post-menopausal women at risk of developing breast cancer wasn’t a shock to breast medical oncologist Abenaa Brewster. But the fact that a patient in her breast cancer prevention clinic hadn’t ever heard of such a possibility before was.
“I thought to myself, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe a woman in America is being educated about preventive therapy from European use,’ because for the last 25 years in America, we have had two drugs that are FDA approved to be used for women who are at high risk of developing breast cancer to prevent breast cancer,” said Brewster, a professor of clinical cancer prevention at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
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