What does Arimidex do?
Arimidex is an adjuvant therapy. Adjuvant therapies are added to primary treatment in order to try and decrease the risk of breast cancer from returning. They include chemotherapy drugs, radiation, targeted therapy, hormone therapy or a combination of the above. Adjuvant therapies help to destroy any cancer cells that were not removed during surgery and, by doing so, reduce the chances of there being a reoccurrence of the disease. Arimidex is the trade name for anastrozole – a hormone therapy that is particularly helpful to postmenopausal women diagnosed with hormone receptor positive early breast cancer. Hormone receptor positive breast cancer tumour cells have hormone receptors – molecules in the tumour cells that recognize and bind with specific hormones. The hormone receptor positive tumour cells depend on the hormones to grow. About 75% of breast cancers are estrogen-receptor-positive (“ER-positive” or “ER+”). and about 65% of ER-positive breast cancers are also progesterone-recep
