Breast Cancer Research and Treatment: Estrogen Can Lower Heart and Breast Cancer Risk
Breast cancer research and treatment as well as prevention is under way in many medical centers throughout the world. Besides normal cancer treatment, there are other alternative breast cancer treatments like using Estrogen.
Government Breast Cancer Research on Estrogen Side Effects
The research, part of the landmark Women's Health Initiative on breast cancer research and treatment study, is likely to surprise women and their doctors, who for years have heard frightening news about the risks of hormone therapy.
But most of those fears are related to the use of a combination of two hormones, estrogen and progestin, which are prescribed to relieve hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause and have been shown to increase a woman's risk of breast cancer.
The new findings, reported Tuesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, come from a breast cancer research and treatment study on 10,000 women who had previously had a hysterectomy, the surgical removal of the uterus.
The Fact About Estrogen Side Effects
While other women in the study were taking combination hormone therapy, women without a uterus took estrogen alone or a placebo for about six years and were followed for nearly 11 years. The estrogen only group was not given progestin, which is prescribed only to protect the uterus from the harmful effects of estrogen.
In the breast cancer research and treatment study, although all the women in the estrogen study stopped using the treatment in 2004, the investigators have continued to monitor their health, as is typical in large clinical trials. In the most surprising new findings, the women with hysterectomies who used estrogen alone had a 23 percent lower risk for breast cancer compared with those who had taken a placebo.
Finding from the Breast Cancer Research
From the above breast cancer research and treatment study result, scientists believe that estrogen only therapy might help to reduce the risk of breast cancer.
