What is Fulvestrant?

Fulvestrant is a drug used to treat postmenopausal women who have a hormonal receptor-positive metastatic carcinoma of breast. Astrazeneca PLC, a pharmaceutical company based in London, sells a medicine such as Faslodex. Food and drug administration (FDA), which is in charge of regulating the Earth's drug, approved Fulvestrant on 25 April 2002. In the case of Fulvestrant, it works against estrogen, which is the primary female sex hormone. As an estrogen receptor antagonist, he blocks the hormonal activity of growing cancer cells. People turn to the medicine when other drugs did not work on blocking estrogen. This includes Tamoxifen, a Nolvadex brand, which also acts as an estrogen receptor antagonist.

Astrazeneca also produces and sells tamoxifen, which was a standard antiestrogen medicine for breast cancer positive to hormonal receptor in women before menopause. Unlike Fulvestrant, however, Tamoxifen also acts as an agonist, which means it raises reactions from the cells of the vasbou for their receptors. This is the opposite of an antagonist action that actually blocks agonists.

Fulvestrant is produced as a solution of 250 milligrams in a 5 millimeter syringe. Drug administration requires intramuscular injection with a dose of 500 mg. The process takes one to two minutes and includes injection of each side of the buttocks with a syringe. This is done three times in the first month, with two 14 -day intervals and once in each next month. Its half -life - time drugs lose half of its pharmacological abilities - it is recorded as 40 days.

This medicine is responsible for almost two dozens of side effects. The most common are loss of appetite, constipation, diarrhea, dizziness, headache, nausea, sweating, stomach pain and vomiting. More serious side effects that require immediate attention to the physician include chest pain, rashes, breathing problems and swelling in the upper body.

FDA KlasIf Fulvestrant, as a belonging to pregnancy, is category D in terms of the risk of fetus for pregnant women. This means that even if doctors can recommend its use, there is significant evidence of the risk of human fetus from marketing reports, investigations or studies controlled by man. The pregnancy category D is one of the more serious categories of the FDA risk classification system, a second only in category X.