Breast cancer drop tied to hormones

Good news IF you were someone who stopped taking or never took hormones for menopause.
Seems they did not really test the use of hormones that well to me. .but to be fair, it is hard to test such a long term effect of hormones too. I just feel many of us are doing the testing on these drugs and therapies and I think most people are unaware of how much is unknown about the drugs they take.

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SAN ANTONIO – The millions of women who quit taking menopause hormones after a big federal study found that the pills raised the risk of breast cancer now have more reason to be glad they stopped.

A new analysis reveals that U.S. breast cancer rates plunged more than 7 percent in 2003 and strongly suggests that the reason is less hormone use.

“It’s a big deal … amazing, really,” said one of the researchers, Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. “It’s better than a cure” because these are cases that never occurred, he said.

About 14,000 fewer women were diagnosed with the disease than had been expected, researchers reported Thursday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Cancers take years to form, so going off hormones would not instantly prevent new tumors. But tumors that had been developing might stop growing, shrink or disappear, so they were no longer detected by mammograms, doctors theorized.

Cases dropped most among women 50 and older — the age group taking hormones. The decline was biggest for tumors whose growth is fueled by estrogen — the type most affected by hormone use.

In fact, when both factors were combined — older women with estrogen-positive tumors — the drop was 12 percent.

The decline was seen in every single cancer registry that reports information to the federal government, and no big change occurred with any other major type of cancer. These are strong signs that the breast cancer decline is no statistical fluke or error.

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