A cheap and widely available drug used to treat osteoporosis could prevent a thousand breast cancer deaths a year, a study has found. Researchers said that bisphosphonates, which are given to keep people’s bones healthy, prevented one in six breast cancer deaths in postmenopausal women over the course of a decade. Trials showed that the drugs stopped breast tumour cells from spreading to the bones, the most common site for secondary cancers, and reduced the risk of dying from the disease by 18% in the first ten years after diagnosis.
Doctors said the findings will have an immediate impact on patient care with bisphosponates being recommended for all postmenopausal women with breast cancer. The drugs had little effect on younger women who had not gone through the menopause. “We expected the drugs to prevent secondary cancer, but the fact that it translates into an 18% reduction in deaths…
