An Effect Of Hormone Therapy On Breast Cancer

An Effect Of Hormone Therapy On Breast Cancer.
Although several beamy studies in fresh years have linked the use of hormone therapy after menopause with an increased endanger of breast cancer, the authors of a new analysis claim the evidence is too limited to confirm the connection. Dr Samuel Shapiro, of the University of Cape Town Medical School in South Africa, and his colleagues took another mien at three kind studies that investigated hormone therapy and its conceivable health risks - the Collaborative Reanalysis, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) and the Million Women Study. Together, the results of these studies found overall an increased hazard of breast cancer amid women who used the combination form of hormone therapy with both estrogen and progesterone.

Women who have had a hysterectomy and use estrogen-only remedial programme also have an increased risk, two of the studies found. The WHI, however, found that estrogen-only psychotherapy may not increase breast cancer risk and may actually decrease it, although that has not been confirmed in other research. After the WHI con was published in July 2002, women dropped hormone remedy in droves.

Many experts pointed to that decline in hormone therapy use as the reason breast cancer rates were declining. Not so, Shapiro said: "The shrink in breast cancer occurrence started three years before the fall in HRT use commenced, lasted for only one year after the HRT dump commenced, and then stopped". For instance between 2002 and 2003, when large numbers of women were still using hormone therapy, the covey of new breast cancer cases fell by nearly 7 percent.

In taking a overlook at the three studies again, Shapiro and his team reviewed whether the evidence satisfied criteria critical to researchers, such as the strength of an association, taking into account other factors that could influence risk. Their conclusion: The proof is not strong enough to say definitively that hormone therapy causes breast cancer. The reading is published in the current issue of the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care.

The experimental conclusion drew mixed reactions from experts. In an editorial accompanying the study, Nick Panay, a physician gynecologist at the Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in London, supported the conclusions of the callow analysis. "If there is a risk, the risk is small, and the benefits of HRT can be life-altering. It is lively that we keep this in perspective when counseling our patients".

The hormone therapy in use today is crop in dose than those used in the previous research. "In principle, we tend to start with lower doses than we old to and increase as required until full symptom relief has been achieved". What is needed now is a clinical provisional in which the hormone therapy in use today is compared with placebo, to evaluate the risks and benefits.

Another accomplished took a more middle-of-the-road view about the potential link. "It would be hard to say the entire failing in breast cancer rates is due to the decline in HRT use," said Dr Steven Narod, the Canada Research Chair in Breast Cancer at the University of Toronto.

According to Dr Susan Gapstur, weakness president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society, the unexplored analysis overlooks some other mighty information. "Indeed, there is a much larger body of scientific evidence from clinical trials and from observational epidemiologic studies comparing mamma cancer incidence rates in women who used HRT to those who did not that demonstrate the risks and benefits of HRT for long-lived diseases".

So "Women need to discuss with their doctors the risk and benefits of taking HRT for the direct prevention of chronic disease, including breast cancer". Narod said hormone replacement is an top-hole therapy for some women. Therapy that includes progesterone carries more danger and limiting use to five years or less seems wise telugu. Shapiro has performed consulting work for the manufacturers of hormone therapy, and Panay has received grants from pharmaceutical companies.