I hear that there are three different new pills that women can take instead of tamoxifen. Whats different about them?
The pills you have heard about are a different class of drugs called aromatase inhibitors. Aromatase is an enzyme in the fatty tissue of the body that is the primary source for production of estrogen in women who have already undergone menopause (unlike younger women who make the female hormone estrogen from their ovaries.) Older women convert hormone from their adrenal glands to estrogen in their fatty tissue with the help of this enzyme aromatase. These pills Aromasin® (exemestane), Arimidex® (anastrozole), and Femara® (letrozole) block the activity of this enzyme and create a very low estrogen environment in your body thus starving your breast cancer cells of estrogen resulting in their demise. All three drugs have been shown to be superior to tamoxifen in various settings. It has, however, also been shown that switching to these drugs after 2 to 3 years or 5 years of use of tamoxifen is superior to 5 years of tamoxifen alone. It remains unclear that one aromatase inhibitor is super
