Breast Cancer decline credited to HRT warning?

Washington, February 5: Breast cancer risk sharply declines on terminating the HRT, a recent study has suggested.

The risk of breast cancer was found to have doubled for post-menopausal women who had taken the combination--estrogen plus progestin--hormone therapy for at least five years.

According to the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine research, breast cancer risk sharply declined on terminating the HRT.

"This is very strong evidence that estrogen plus progestin causes breast cancer," said Dr. Marcia Stefanick, a Stanford University professor of medicine and co-author of the new study.

The Women's Health Initiative study in 2002 was actually responsible for linking breast cancer to HRT and it sparked a heated debate. The hints of breast cancer surfacing after HRT led to the abandoning of the HRT drugs by women on a large scale and consequently the sales dropped.

A few years after that, the incidence of breast cancer also dropped, further boosting the link between HRT and breast cancer.

The researchers looked at data from more than 15,000 women involved in the original study, who had all been urged to stop taking HRT in 2002. In addition, they also analyzed data from women who were not originally involved in the study and had not been asked to give up the HRT.

Some experts and a manufacturers of HRT pills did not agree to the view that the drop in U.S. breast cancer cases indicates that HRT was responsible for the disease. It could also be due to changes in mammography.

"The increased risk of breast cancer associated with the use of estrogen plus progestin declined markedly soon after discontinuation of combined hormone therapy and was unrelated to changes in frequency of mammography," the researchers concluded.

Most of the subjects had been taking Prempro, a combined estrogen-progesterone pill made by Wyeth.

"We don't believe the article supports the theory that the decline in use of estrogen plus progesterone caused a one-time abrupt nationwide decline in breast cancer incidence," said Gwendolyn Fisher, spokeswoman for Wyeth.

"They don't offer an explanation of why breast cancer rates remain stable today when HRT rates continue to decline," she said.

Dr David Sturdee, president of the International Menopause Society, urges women to seek their doctors’ advice on HRT, “Breast cancer takes years to develop, so if this drop was due to stopping HRT, we wouldn't be seeing it just yet,” he said. "There's something happening, which is worth investigating, but it's unlikely to be HRT."