Pair of cancer studies
need participants
The Cancer Research Center of Hawaii is seeking women and men to participate in national breast and prostate cancer prevention studies.
STAR (Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene), the largest breast cancer prevention study in history, is designed to determine whether Raloxifene, a drug used to treat and prevent osteoporosis, is as effective as Tamoxifen in reducing breast cancer in high-risk women.
A Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial, called SELECT, is to study effects of those two dietary supplements in preventing prostate cancer.
The study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene, which began in 1999, needs 19,000 women.
Thus far, more than 17,000 women have been recruited, including 134 Hawaii women, and more are needed.
Participants must be post-menopausal, with no history of breast cancer and must not have taken the two drugs for three months or more.
More than 32,000 men are sought to participate in the prostate cancer prevention study for seven to 12 years.
Reasonably healthy men who are 55 and older are eligible for the study. They must have had no cancer within five years except for nonmelanoma skin cancer.
All distributed capsules will be free for both studies.
The Cancer Research Center of Hawaii, at 1236 Lauhala St., is involved in more than 100 national clinical trials.
For more information, call the Cancer Center's Clinical Trials Unit at 586-2977.
