Possibility Related Posts:
Women undergoing hormone therapy for menopause symptoms face an increased risk of developing invasive breast cancer or dying from the disease, according to the results of a study of 11 years.
Women taking hormone therapy that uses a combination of estrogen and progestin were 1.25 times more likely to develop invasive breast cancer, and twice as likely to die from breast cancer than women who took a placebo during the study period.
The study is a follow up of participants in the Women’s Health Initiative, which consisted of several clinical trials with more than 100,000 women. In 2002, a trial looking at the effects of estrogen and progestin were suspended after 5 ½ years, when researchers found the treatment increases the risk of invasive breast cancer by 25 percent.
The new study was able to see the effect of hormonal therapy for a longer time period, and was the first to analyze a woman’s risk of dying from breast cancer.
The findings suggest that women taking these hormones should closely follow the current recommendation, which is to use the lowest dose for the shortest possible time, said researcher Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of the Biomedical Research Institute at Los Angeles Medical Center Harbor-UCLA in Torrance, California.
Women may also consider stopping treatment after a year or two to see if their menopausal symptoms have subsided, he said. (more…)