Turn on cookies to sign in
Signing in saves your progress to your Curie account. We can only do that with cookies on — turn them on to continue.
Sticking with hormone therapy pays off for breast cancer patients — but the type matters. A new study finds that postmenopausal women with early-stage hormone receptor-positive breast cancer who adhere to aromatase inhibitors for 5 years face higher risks of hypertension, dyslipidemia, and diabetes compared to tamoxifen users. The silver lining? Long-term adherence to either therapy significantly lowers the risk of dying from breast cancer or cardiovascular disease.
Sticking with hormone therapy pays off for breast cancer patients — but the type of therapy matters more than we thought. A large prospective study using data from over 8,300 postmenopausal women with early-stage hormone receptor-positive breast cancer found that 5-year adherence to aromatase inhibitors (AIs) was associated with significantly higher risks of hypertension, dyslipidemia, and diabetes compared to non-adherent women. Tamoxifen users, by contrast, only showed an increased risk for hypertension — likely because tamoxifen improves lipid profiles by lowering LDL and total cholesterol levels.
Despite the cardiometabolic downsides, there's a crucial upside: long-term adherence to either therapy was tied to meaningfully lower risks of breast cancer death, cardiovascular death, and all-cause mortality — making the case that staying on treatment is still worth it.
By the Numbers:
Why it matters: These findings give oncologists and cardiologists a clearer roadmap for survivorship care — identifying key windows when cardiometabolic risks begin to rise so targeted monitoring and early intervention can be deployed without sacrificing the survival benefits of staying on therapy.
