Women at high breast cancer risk to be given preventive drugs Preventing women developing cancer could save the NHS thousands of pounds by reducing the need for treatment, the health regulator said. Women at extremely high risk of breast cancer such as Angelina Jolie, who recently underwent a double mastectomy, may still opt for surgery because it is more reliable but the drugs could be an option for women at less elevated levels of risk, experts said. Professor Gareth Evans, a consultant in clinical genetics at St Mary's Hospital in Manchester who helped to develop the guidelines, said: "It's a major breakthrough for women that they are going to be able to be offered this treatment in the future. This treatment is potentially not just cost-effective but cost saving to the NHS and more importantly for women they don't have to go through the stress and trauma of a diagnosis, radiotherapy, potentially chemotherapy. Neither Tamoxifen nor Raloxifene, an alternative which will be offered to post-menopausal women, has been licensed as a preventive drug but both have a long history of use for the treatment of cancer and osteoporosis respectively. Clinical trials have found that both drugs can reduce the risk of breast cancer by 30 to 40 per cent, and officials said the drugs are well understood by doctors. But many women choose not to take them because they can come with menopause-like sideeffects including hot flushes and mood swings for the first six months, they added. An ongoing trial of the treatment suggests about 12 per cent of women offered the drugs are likely to use them, meaning more than 50,000 across the country could opt for the preventive treatment. Genetic testing should also be made more widely available for men and women to determine whether they have genetic mutations which come with an extremely high risk of cancer and can be shared by other family members, the new guidelines say. Tests are currently offered to breast and ovarian cancer patients who have a 20 per cent chance of carrying BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations - the genetic faults which prompted Ms Jolie's decision to undergo preventive surgery. Under the new guidance patients with only a 10 per cent risk can be offered the tests, and healthy people can also be tested for the first time if they are deemed likely to carry a mutation but have no living relative with cancer. Dr Caitlin Palframan, assistant head of policy at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said the guidance would allow at-risk women to make an informed choice about their future. "We believe that this guideline is a game changer for people with a family history of breast cancer," she said. We think more women will have more options to reduce their risk, which ultimately means we will prevent more breast cancer cases.