Enzyme fighter works as well as tamoxifen

A drug that physicians usually prescribe for breast cancer only after the front-line tumor fighter tamoxifen has lost its punch works just as well as that better-known drug, a study of postmenopausal women shows.

The drug, anastrozole, even surpasses tamoxifen in fighting certain kinds of breast cancers–those with estrogen-dependent tumor cells–and causes fewer side effects overall, researchers report in the Nov.