Word: cancers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...into wide use. Now, however, new questions are being raised about their safety. Although the evidence is far from conclusive, a major study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that at least some of the post-menopause medication may increase the risk of breast cancer...
...after menopause; a third of them were also on progestin, an artificial form of the hormone progesterone. The researchers compared these women with others who had not taken hormones. The results: after nine years the women who took a kind of estrogen called estradiol had about twice the breast-cancer rate of those who were not on replacement therapy. The women on estrogen and progestin had a higher rate -- about four times as many cases of breast cancer after they used the combination for six or more years. Medical experts point out that parts of this report contradict some earlier...
Estrogen came into favor many years ago because it helped prevent osteoporosis and appeared to guard against heart disease. But it was discovered that estrogen increased the risk of uterine cancer. To lower the odds of contracting uterine cancer, many doctors added progestin to the treatment, and it was hoped that the drug would also help reduce any risk of breast cancer associated with estrogen alone. The drawback to progestin seemed to be that it reduces some of the benefits of estrogen, in particular the apparent protection against heart disease. Now the possibility of a breast- cancer risk has further...
...Elizabeth Barrett-Connor of the University of California, San Diego, argues that the "benefits of estrogen seem strongly established. In my opinion, the data are not conclusive enough to warrant any immediate change in the way we approach hormone replacement." Dr. I. Craig Henderson of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston notes that estradiol, the estrogen implicated in the Swedish report, is not the same as the estrogens most commonly used in the U.S. "While women should not conclude yet that they are totally without risk," he says, "it is highly likely that the estrogen American women...
Estrogen-based drugs intended to ease the toll of menopause are linked to breast cancer. -- A new study shows that AZT can slow the onset of AIDS...