We finally have clinical confirmation of something we have been suspecting scientifically for a long time now: there are significant interactions between some depression meds and tamoxifen.

We can actually quantify these with testing for CYP2D6 enzyme activity. We know for the last few years that women metabolize tamoxifen to the active form through this liver enzyme system, but 10% of women lack enough activity in the enzyme to do the chemical reaction.

This looks to be interesting: an archive of a conference in December. Looks to be freely available on the web, though they ask for login credentials.

http://www.cancertalklive.net/event_3_09.html

It's industry sponsored, but has some great names attached to it.

Night sweats hot flushes and painful joint aches may counter-intuitively be good news for women using hormone-based medicine for breast cancer. It could mean that their tumours have a diminished probability of returning according to researchers. Such menopause-like symptoms in women after taking AstraZeneca's breast cancer drug Arimidex or generic tamoxifen were found to be 30 percent less likely to suffer a recurrence of their cancer in the subsequent nine years the study found.

Doctors are less likely to treat black women with radiation after surgical removal of early stage breast cancer than they are white women researchers stated which adds to evidence of racial disparity in cancer treatment in the US. 37 305 women 65 and older who were part of the study had undergone a procedure called a lumpectomy in which doctors removed just the tumor and spared the breast a procedure which is far less radical than the surgical removal of the entire breast a mastectomy.