HRT Fuels Aggressive Breast Cancer
Health Day News
August 2003

Not only does hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increase the risk of breast cancer for women taking the supplements, but those tumours appear to be especially deadly.

That's the conclusion of a major, five-year study of more than 1 million British women, and it represents the third strike this week against HRT.

The researchers found that those taking combination HRT had a higher risk of developing breast cancer and a greater risk of dying from the disease than did women not using the therapy.

Previous studies, including the Women's Health Initiative in the United States, have identified the link between breast tumours and HRT. But the British research is the first to suggest that the tumours caused by hormone supplements are more aggressive.

The new work, reported in the August 9th issue of The Lancet, found that the breast cancer risks are magnified the longer women take hormone treatments -- but it also found that they fade with time after the therapy is stopped. Over the last decade, the researchers estimate that use of HRT in the U.K. has led to 20,000 extra cases of breast cancer among women ages 50 to 64.

In an editorial accompanying the journal article, three doctors from the Netherlands and Canada advised most women taking HRT to stop doing so immediately. "Now there's some urgency to get these people off hormone therapy," says Dr. Walter Rosser, head of family medicine at Queens University, in Kingston, Ontario, and a co-author of the commentary.

Between 20 percent and 50 percent of women in the Western world who are between the ages of 45 and 70 have taken or are now taking HRT, according to Rosser.

Read NPR article: Hormone Replacement Therapy Raises Risk Of Death From Breast Cancer.