(Reuters) — Women with breast cancer who take common blood pressure drugs may have better odds of surviving the disease, according to two preliminary studies.
In one study, women taking drugs known as beta-blockers survived longer without seeing the tumor return than those not on the medication. In the other, they were less likely to be diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer or die from it.
Still, the researchers strike a cautious note and say no one should consider taking beta-blockers to stave off cancer at this point.
“We saw an association, now it’s time to prove whether they are the cause,” said Dr. Amal Melhem-Bertrandt, who worked on one of the studies. “It’s very promising, it’s encouraging, but we still have to do the studies.”
Beta-blockers curb the effect of stress hormones like adrenaline and noradrenaline, and are used to treat high blood pressure.
Cancer researchers began to take an interest in them after animal studies showed stress responses are linked to tumor growth.
“There is a lot of literature suggesting chronic stress may influence breast cancer recurrence,” Melhem-Bertrandt told Reuters Health. “We wanted to see whether blocking one of the arms of your stress response would help reduce breast cancer.”
So she and her colleagues looked at medical records for some 1,400 women treated for breast cancer with chemotherapy and surgery at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. About seven percent of the women also happened to be taking beta-blockers.
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
Loading ...
more inhumane animal studies done to find further use for their drugs 🙁
I agree Anneh. I don’t know why we continue to use animals for studying drugs anyway…..they DO NOT have the same make-up as we do; plus more importantly – “Unseen they suffer, unheard they cry, in agony they linger, in loneliness they DIE”.
I too agree. Look at how many drugs have sickened or killed people when approved by the FDA after being tested on animals.
Yeah,
Lets just test them on humans instead!
Now if there aren’t enough volounteers, lets find ways of compelling them to take part so that testing can be done.
No don’t like that, so do we just push the drugs out untested?
No not that, so why not stop the drug companies from making profits by closing them down and having no new drugs. That’ll work eh?
Does all that really sound sensible?
Does anybody who wants to ban animal rtesting have a viable alternative that they’d be happy to rely on?
‘Thought not!