Word: estrogenous
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...results of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI)--the largest, most scientifically rigorous study of older women's medical issues ever conducted--continue to startle researchers, confuse the public and frustrate headline writers. Case in point: last week's report that taking estrogen for seven years does not increase the risk of breast cancer for many women. There is a lot of good news in that finding, as well as some important caveats...
...many ways, the story began four years ago when researchers halted a different part of the WHI--one that looked at the long-term health effects of taking the hormone combination estrogen and progestin (Prempro)--because of an increased risk of breast cancer and heart disease. (Women with a uterus who want to try hormone therapy must take both hormones because estrogen alone increases the risk of uterine cancer.) Two years later, the estrogen-only (Premarin) part of the trial, which focused on nearly 11,000 postmenopausal women who had undergone a hysterectomy, was stopped because of a slightly greater...
...results are now in and should reassure a lot of women. There is still no scientific justification for the long-term use of hormones after menopause to prevent such conditions as heart disease or dementia. But a shorter course of estrogen--seven years or less--is safe enough with respect to breast cancer and other health risks that it's a reasonable option for the treatment of severe menopausal symptoms. In other words, says Marcia Stefanick, one of the lead researchers, since there is no overriding safety concern, "the focus should be on your individual risk...
...prove cause and effect. That's not necessarily a problem. No one has ever done a randomized trial of smoking, yet it clearly causes cancer. On the other hand, it was on the basis of good epidemiological evidence that doctors believed for years that long-term use of estrogen and progestin would significantly protect women from heart disease. When the theory was put to the test with a randomized, controlled trial, however, it turned out to be dead wrong...
...strategies take advantage of the fact that some cancers actually show a gender preference. Women who smoke, for example, are three times as likely to develop lung cancer as men who light up, and scientists at Cell Therapeutics found to their surprise that the reason for the difference was estrogen. In the presence of that hormone, which circulates in higher levels in women, lung cells are exposed to more of the carcinogens in cigarette smoke. Harnessing estrogen's ability to speed up some metabolic processes, the scientists piggybacked a potent chemotherapy agent onto a commonly circulating protein, hoping that...