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.