Hormone Replacement Therapy And Breast Cancer by Patricia T. Kelly, Ph. D.

The study followed women for only about five years, so all or

most of the breast cancers found were probably present in an

undetected state before the study began.

Janet asked if HRT use might have caused some breast cancers

to grow more rapidly and therefore be detected sooner than eight

years. This is unlikely. A number of studies find that breast

cancers in women who were using HRT were not larger and were not

dividing more rapidly than breast cancers in non hormone users.

Since breast cancers grow more slowly in older women and the

average age in this study was 63, breast cancers in this group

would tend to grow more slowly and so take even longer than the

eight year average to be detected.

Women in the WHI study used a particular type of hormone

Prempro. The results of this study therefore do not apply to

other, newer approaches in which more natural hormones are used

and a woman's menstrual cycle is more closely approximated.

Janet was surprised to learn that many studies find that

women who use HRT do not have an increase in breast cancer risk

compared to women who don't use hormones, even when hormones are

used for twenty years. Also, in another large study in which some

women were assigned to take Prempro and others not, women who

used Prempro had no significant increase in breast cancer risk.

As Janet left, she said, "I can see now that when I hear

about a study I need to know how big a risk is and not just that

it is increased. I'll also ask how long a study it was. This

discussion has given me a whole different perspective."

Understand and manage your cancer risk. Visit

http://www.ptkelly.com and sign up for our free teleforum.

Patricia T. Kelly, Ph.D. is a medical geneticist who

specializes in providing information about cancer risk to

individuals and health professionals. She is affiliated with

Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco. Information

about her book, Assess Your True Risk of Breast Cancer, can be

found on her web site: http://www.ptkelly.com.

Go to Page 1

BIO:

Dr. Kelly is a medical geneticist who has been a Diplomate of the American Board of Medical Genetics since 1982. In 1993 she became a Founding Fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics. She received her Ph.D. in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley.

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