Postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy (HRT) using estrogen-progestin combinations may be associated with a more than two-fold higher relative risk of developing lobular cancer or tubular cancer than of developing ductal cancer. These results come from a large study from Europe, which was recently published in the journal Breast Cancer Research. Findings from this research show for the first time that estrogen-progestin therapy combination is associated with a higher relative risk of developing tubular cancer than ductal cancer, when taken for more than five years. This study also confirms previous findings that postmenopausal hormone therapy using estrogen-progestin is associated with a higher relative risk of lobular cancer than ductal cancer.
This study was conducted by Lena Rosenberg and colleagues from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden together with researchers from Genome Institute of Singapore. They combed through the records of 1,888 women with ductal breast cancer, 308 women with lobular cancer and 93 women with tubular breast cancer. All women were matched for age with 3,065 women randomly selected from the population, acted as controls. Both patients and controls were asked to fill in a questionnaire about their medical history, health status and use of menopausal hormone therapy.
Results of the published study show that women who used medium potency estrogen-progestin combination therapy had a higher risk of developing lobular or tubular breast cancer than of developing ductal cancer, compared with women who did not use hormone therapy. Woman who used combination therapy for more than five years were at higher risk for any of these subtypes of breast cancers. |
