Research supports safety of estrogen therapy
CHICAGO — Two months after concluding that estrogen replacement isn't bad for women's hearts, government researchers said Tuesday that it doesn't cause breast cancer, either. And for some women, estrogen actually reduced the risk of breast cancer.
The new analysis of results from the government-sponsored Women's Health Initiative was published in the issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The paper confirmed what the researchers first reported two years ago: Estrogen does not cause breast cancer. In fact, there were fewer cases of breast cancer among women who took estrogen, but researchers noted that the difference was not statistically significant.
But in the new study, when the researchers excluded women who stopped taking their pills, the benefit was significant: Women who took estrogen had a 33 percent lower risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer.
The women in the trial all had undergone hysterectomy, so they didn't take progesterone. That hormone, or a synthetic variation of it (progestin), generally is prescribed to prevent uterine cancer in women taking estrogen.
Another part of the Women's Health Initiative looked at the combination of synthetic estrogen and progestin called Prempro. In that trial, whose results were reported in 2002, the women assigned to take Prempro had slightly more cases of breast cancer than those who took dummy pills, as well as more heart attacks and strokes. Hormone use plummeted in response.
The most recent analysis of the data suggests that the culprit is the progestin.
An interactive look at breast cancer, including treatment and prevention
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