Will Aromatase Inhibitors Reduce Density?
The aromatase inhibitors (AIs) are a class of drugs that have been shown to be of value in both early and late breast cancer. These include anastrozole (Arimidex), exemestane (Aromasin) and letrozole (Femara) However, not all women will benefit from this therapy and we would like to be able to understand which women will not respond favorably in order to provide alternative treatments. Breast density may help us to target these women. AIs block an enzyme that is involved with producing estrogens in postmenopausal women; thus AIs result in significant reductions of estrogens in the breast. Because mammographic density is estrogen responsive, we hypothesize that breast density also will decrease with aromatase inhibition. We propose a study to examine the effect of aromatase inhibitors (AI) on breast density and compare to changes in breast density seen among a group of women of the same age not on hormonal therapy over a similar time frame. We also propose to investigate whether changes
