Long-term endocrine therapy is recommended for women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer. Even though the therapy can reduce the risk of the cancer recurring, many women don’t continue it, due to several factors.
In a study of 1,231 women that was published in Psycho-Oncology, 59% of the women said that they had at least one obstacle to continuing endocrine therapy. The study identified three primary reasons that women don’t stick to endocrine therapy:
- Challenges with getting in the habit of taking medication on a regular basis
- Side effects
- High cost/low accessibility to the treatment
Women on Medicaid were more likely than women with private insurance to report issues with side effects and resource barriers. Black and African American women reported having all three of these obstacles.
According to the lead author of the study, Dr. Jennifer Spencer from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says, “Endocrine therapy can offer a big benefit for breast cancer survivors, but many of the strategies we use to help women who are struggling with medication adherence are only designed to address one barrier at a time. Our study finds that there are at least three distinct kinds of barriers that women might experience when taking endocrine therapy--suggesting that intervention strategies that can help address multiple barriers at once might be more effective, especially for Black women.”