Alternative drug to Arimidex

wb ~ You need to join us on a thread here called "natural girls."  There's lots of good information along the lines of what you're after.  To answer your question -- yes, there are several natural estrogen modulators, like I3C and DIM.  But doing a supplement alone probably isn't as effective as doing it along with  lifestyle changes that are also known to lower estrogen and/or your risk of a recurrence, such as exercise and diet changes.  Too much to go into here, but hope to see you on "natural girls" if you're interested.  You can find it in the "Alternative, complementary and holistic treatment" section.   Deanna  

wb ~ I guess I didn't understand what you meant by "natural."  As you probably know, there are 3 aromatese inhibitors -- Arimidex, Aromasin and Femara.  Some women have fewer problems with 1 than another, but finding which one is a matter of trial & error.  Also, sometimes stopping whichever one you're on and restarting it helps.    Deanna 

wb ~ As 07 said, you won't find a drug that blocks estrogen that doesn't give you major SEs because the SEs are the result of your body being totally deprived of estrogen -- not a reaction to the drug itself. 

I also wanted to give you one other possibility to look into.  It's a newer drug called Evista.  My primary doctor recently RX'd it for me for osteopenia, but it also regulates estrogen, and evidently has bc prevention capabilities similar to tamoxifen but without the blood clot risk, although it's not yet fully approved for bc prevention.  I still haven't decided if I want to take it (I'm just very leery of drugs), but since you're in a searching mode, you might want to ask your onc about it.     Deanna

I'm not brave enough to follow oncs who have such a poor track record on approved breast cancer therapies that turn out to be duds. Don't forget chemo was "approved" for hormone receptor positive women for 30 years. Until they discovered it conferred no benefit in 97% of the cases.

I'm not brave enough to follow these known losers with respect to breast cancer.

I'd be willing to listen to oncs with respect to a blood cancer or testicular cancer-- where oncs have good gotten fairly good results. But with breast cancer they have screwed up big time.

How many years is it going to take to discover Arimidex makes 45 year-old women feel like 75 year-old women and confers no survival value? I will not be a guinea pig.

I don't think that a great deal of time was spent on clinical trials for the AL's, remember the patent for Tamox ran out just as the AL's were introduced.......so IMO WE are the clinical trial.

wblibrary, have you tried tamoxifen? Many women who have trouble with AIs do just fine on tamoxifen and the difference in effectiveness is very minute.  Its definitely worth a try.  I've been on tamoxifen for over 4 years and am doing great.

Where do you buy 13c? I cannot find it. I have been drinking concord grape juice, it suppose to cut your estrogen by 50% Thanks

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WOW $300 DOLLARS its only $3.00 a month here in new Zealand but mine are still sitting in the drawer i have decided not to take it. i felt anxious and stressed and had this strong feeling not to take it. 32 side affects to radiation 36 to temoefin and one is it can make the tumors grow then temoxifen side affects and then arimadex it seems down here in nz they are not telloing us all the side affects when i told my surgeon and specalist nurse about what i had found out about meds they told me to " stop being pro active and just take the meds . This is the first time in my life i have been pro active and i cant beiliev what i have found just like others here and on other threads

Hi, I'd just like to point out that Arimidex is not an experimental drug, rather, there have been numerous clinical trials that have tested it in various situations for breast cancer.  For example, one major study was a 10 year clinical trial with over 9000 postmenopausal women who'd had localized breast cancer that finished in 2005.  It's called the ATAC trial, for "Arimidex, Tamoxifen, Alone or in Combination".  It showed that Arimidex was even more beneficial than tamoxifen at reducing later breast cancers  in post-menopausal women who had localized breast cancer (e.g. not metastatic).  As with any clinical trial, side effects were reported.  You can find official info about this trial if you just put ATAC trial and/or arimidex into google.  You can see a list of all clinical trials on arimidex by going to clinicaltrials.gov and putting arimidex into the search box. 

This isn't to say you should or shouldn't take it, I wouldn't try to answer that question for anyone, but just know this drug has been through many clinical trials.

cs777,  Arimidex certainly is still an experimental drug. It has only been tested in comparison with Tamoxifen and for recurrence.

"Not knowing when the dawn is coming, I open every door." -- Emily Dickinson

Please read Dr. John Lee's book, "What your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer". He also has a web-site.

I had terrible pain and stiffness in my fingers and feet, also numbing-pain and tingling while on Arimidex. My doctor kept telling me it wasn't from the drug even though the side effects didn't start until after I began taking the drug. It reached a point where I was afraid I had permanent nerve damage. A nurse in the Dr.'s office suggested I quit taking it for one month to see if I felt better. Within a few weeks, the side effects began to go away. It took 6 months to completely disappear.

I've been using natural progesterone cream recomended by Dr. Lee for about a year. He says the problem isn't too much estrogen, but too little progesterone to balance it out. I have several friends who have been using the natural progesterone cream for years. It helps hot flashes, fibrocystic breasts (which I had, but now is gone), and osteoporosis. It's absorbed through the skin and must be applied once or twice daily. I don't know of any harmful side effects at all.

I hope this information helps.

lucy88, I have no desire to have a war of words or ideas with you.  I will, however, point out that we're using the term "experimental" in two different ways, and also clarify some of the data. First, "experimental" in the biomed community means that a drug has not yet been demonstrated to be good for any particular thing and is not yet approved by regulatory bodies like the FDA in the US for prescriptions by doctors.  This is the sense in which I'm using the term. 

That said...There are numerous completed clinical trials of Arimidase that have demonstrated that, in certain BC women (postmenopausal, early stage BC, localized disease, and similar), Arimidase as adjuvant therapy was better than tamoxifen at reducing recurrences, and as good as tamoxifen at reducing breast cancer mortality.  In other words, the data show both reduction in recurrances and reduction in BC-caused deaths, the first actually better than tamox, and the latter as well as tamox.  On the basis of such completed trials, Arimidase was approved for adjuvant use in the types of BC patients that had been tested.

You seem to be upset that the clinical trials have not compared Arimidase to a placebo group (no treatment), rather than to tamoxifen.  That's understandable, however, the reason that wasn't and isn't done is because it would have been unethical for a clinical trial to give one of the groups of women nothing (placebo) rather than a drug that had already been proven to save lives (tamoxifen).  Indeed, the regulatory bodies (FDA) would not have allowed such a trial, as it would have condemned some of the placebo-group patients to death unnecessarily.  The final logic is thus: tamoxifen has been proven to reduce BC-caused death very significantly (see below), and head-to-head trials showed arimidex is equal to tamoxifen wrt reducing BC-caused death, therefore arimidex also reduces BC-caused deaths.  In addition, in the populations tested, Arimidase was found to reduce recurrances in even more women than tamoxifen did.  Therefore, for postmenopausal women w/early stage, localized cancers, the field now typically considers the "best" (to treat the BC) drug to be arimidase (or other AI's) over tamoxifen.  Obviously, the choice of whether it's best for any given woman is that woman's choice based on all her considerations of side effects, risks, etc.

As for whether there continues to be experiments on Arimidase, I absolutely agree that new clinical trials (yes, experiments) continue, as the company looks to see how many other BC situations it might be good for (and perhaps other cancers too), and to see how longer-term survival statistics will play out.  And in that sense it is indeed still an experimental drug. 

FYI, you can find a summary of 30+ yrs of tamoxifen data (to which Arimidase is being compared) here:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15894097, with the important mortality summary sentence being: "For ER-positive disease only, allocation to about 5 years of adjuvant tamoxifen reduces the annual breast cancer death rate by 31% (SE 3), largely irrespective of the use of chemotherapy and of age (<50, 50-69, > or =70 years), progesterone receptor status, or other tumour characteristics."

I suspect the reason for the overall decrease in survival is due to the stripping of estrogen which would give women a life expectancy closer to that of men who have a lower life expectancy than women. 

Life expectancy changes as we get older and according to many factors such as the country and even area where we live, our general health, weight, habits, financial status, whether we are single etc.  I imagine this type of calculation would be difficult, but I know overall that my life expectancy will be shorter the longer I remain on Arimidex, but could be cut considerably more if Arimidex is indeed holding progression at bay.  Also the physical and mental debility and pain from secondaries would make most Arimidex SE's pale in comparison.

This is the question we all need answered.  Are budding mets lying dormant or growing silently so that these drugs can keep the monster at bay, or did the initial treatment clear every trace from our body with no stem cells lying dormant and no need for further possibly debilitating SE's? It would also save a fortune in unnecessary treatment costs and resources.

If we had a test that showed whether the cancer was clear, dormant or active then it would save so many people from unnecessary treatments, worry and reduced quality of life for no benefit and the rest of us could go full steam into aggressive treatments knowing there was a potential benefit to outweigh the risks.

This uncertainty is what eats away at us.  It's the cancer we need to get mad at and the lack of a cure, reliable treatments and tests that will give us some degree of certainty about recurrence.