No mental effects seen with Arimidex
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Women taking Arimidex to prevent breast cancer can be fairly reassured that it won’t affect their mental capacities, British researchers report.
Arimidex, a. k. a. anastrazole, belongs to a class of drugs called aromatase inhibitors, which block the production of estrogen. There have been concerns that estrogen depletion might impair cognitive abilities in women, but the results of a new study suggest that anastrazole does not have this effect in women past menopause.
“These findings should be reassuring in the short term for postmenopausal women being treated with anastrozole, their clinicians, and carers,” lead author Dr. Valerie A. Jenkins concludes.
Using data from the International Breast Intervention Study, Jenkins, from the University of Sussex in Brighton, and her colleagues compared the cognitive effects of anastrazole to placebo in 227 postmenopausal women at high risk for breast cancer.
Standard cognitive tests were performed at start of the study and after 6 and 24 months of treatment.
No significant differences in cognitive performance were noted between the groups, the team reports in medical journal Lancet Oncology. Specifically, memory changes were noted in 13 women in each group at 6 months, and this number dropped to 5 in the placebo group and 3 in the anastrozole group by 24 months.
“Our findings lend support to the view that depletion of (estrogen) concentrations once a woman is postmenopausal does not notably interfere with the processes of memory and attention over a 24-month period,” the investigators conclude.
SOURCE: Lancet Oncology, September 2, 2008.
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