Estrogen-Only Therapy Reduces Breast Cancer Chances In Post-Menopausal Women

March 7, 2012

A new study published this week shows that women who used estrogen alone as hormone replacement therapy after menopause had a lower risk of developing breast cancer up to five years after they stopped taking it, reports Shari Roan for the Los Angeles Times.

This discovery adds yet another twist to the ongoing story on hormone replacement therapy for treatment of hot flashes and poor sleep quality.

The estrogen-only therapy appears to cut the risk of having breast cancer by about 20 percent and significantly reduces a womans risk of dying from the disease and the benefits appear to last for years after the therapy has concluded, reports Brenda Goodman, MA, for WebMD.

Executive director of the North American Menopause Society (NAMS), Margery Gass, MD, explained to Goodman: certainly for some women hormone therapy dramatically improves their quality of life.

The report is a follow-up analysis of the landmark Womens Health Initiative, a clinical trial of tens of thousands of women that began in 1993. That study compared two hormone replacement therapies, estrogen plus progestin, which most women must take, and estrogen alone, taken by women who have had hysterectomies.

The double-hormone arm of the study was abruptly halted in 2002 after scientists found that it raised the risk of breast cancer without conferring hoped-for benefits on the heart.

In 2004, the estrogen-alone arm of the study was also halted after researchers discovered an increased risk of stroke and blood clots. At the time, it was not clear how estrogen alone affected breast cancer risk, however research since then found that estrogen alone did not increase risk and maybe even lowered it.

This latest study, published in the journal Lancet Oncology, provides the strongest evidence yet that estrogen alone not only lowers breast cancer risk for a sustained time for some women, it also decreases mortality for the disease.

Study coauthor Dr. Rowan T. Chlebowski, an investigator at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute in Torrance and chief of medical oncology and hematology at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, told the LA Times reporter, Its a very interesting finding.

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Estrogen-Only Therapy Reduces Breast Cancer Chances In Post-Menopausal Women