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Differential long-term tamoxifen therapy benefit by menopausal status in breast cancer patients: secondary analysis of a controlled randomized clinical trial

A. Johansson, Huma Dar, A. Nordenskjöld, G. Pérez-Tenorio, N. Tobin, C. Yau, C. Benz, L. Esserman et al.

Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2024

5 citations

Abstract

Abstract Background Estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer patients have a long-term risk of distant metastatic disease, and premenopausal patients have a higher risk. Randomized studies with long-term follow-up are essential to understand treatment benefit. We elucidated the long-term tamoxifen therapy benefit by menopausal status in the Stockholm tamoxifen trials with 20 years complete follow-up. Methods Secondary analysis of 1242 estrogen receptor–positive and HER2-negative patients that were randomly assigned to 2-5 years of 40 mg adjuvant tamoxifen or no endocrine therapy. Distant recurrence-free interval in tamoxifen-treated vs endocrine untreated patients was assessed by Kaplan–Meier, Cox proportional hazards regression, and time-varying analyses. Results In premenopausal patients, a statistically significant tamoxifen benefit was observed for lymph node–negative (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] = 0.46, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.24 to 0.87), progesterone receptor–positive (adjusted HR = 0.61, 95% CI = 0.41 to 0.91), and genomic low-risk tumors (adjusted HR = 0.47, 95% CI = 0.26 to 0.85) but only lasted beyond 10 years for genomic low-risk tumors. Postmenopausal patients showed long-term benefit for all good-prognosis markers including low-grade (adjusted HR = 0.55, 95% CI = 0.41 to 0.73), lymph node–negative (adjusted HR = 0.44, 95% CI = 0.30 to 0.64), progesterone receptor–positive (adjusted HR = 0.60, 95% CI = 0.44 to 0.80), Ki-67 low (adjusted HR = 0.51, 95% CI…

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Evidence Hub reads this as a secondary / pooled analysis, done in people. Its evidence level is 3 of 5 (Moderate · trial / cohort / secondary analysis). Trials without a large randomized design, cohorts and secondary analyses give moderate evidence.

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