SAN ANTONIO, Dec. 14, 2006
U.S. Breast Cancer Rates Plunge
Experts Say Reduction In Use Of Hormone Pill May Be Linked To Dramatic Drop In 2003
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Play CBS Video Video Hormone Replacement Therapy A new breast cancer study may be putting hormone replacement therapy in jeopardy. Dr. Emily Senay explains a drop in hormone therapy may be directly related to fewer cancer cases.
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Video Breast Cancer Rate Plummets Researchers announced that the breast cancer rate dropped more than 7 percent in one year. Sharyn Alfonsi reports that the decline may be linked to hormone replacement pills.
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Video More On Hormone Replacement Scientists have linked the decrease in the rate of breast cancer to hormone replacement pills. Dr. Jon LaPook provides some advice on whether women should avoid this type of therapy.
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(CBS/iStockphoto)
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Interactive Cancer Learn about the most common cancers, who gets them and how they are treated.
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Video Archive Eye On Health CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook examines various health issues and treatments.
The 7.2 percent decline came a year after a big federal study linked menopause hormones to a higher risk of breast cancer, heart disease and other problems. Within months, millions of women stopped taking the pills.
A new analysis of federal cancer statistics, presented by researchers from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Thursday at a breast cancer conference in Texas, revealed the drop in tumors.
Why do doctors think the 2003 drop is largely due to hormones?
Cases declined most among women 50 and older, with tumors whose growth is fueled by estrogen — the age group and type of cancer most affected by hormone use. Around 2003, researchers said, these women heeded warnings and stopped using HRT — hormone replacement therapy.
But Dr. Freya Schnabel of New York Columbia Presbyterian says stopping hormone therapy may be just one reason for the dramatic decrease in breast cancer that year, reports CBS News correspondent Sharon Alfonsi. Better mammograms could play a part, too.
"If one thing is true," Schnabel tells Alfonsi, "it's that breast cancer is just not that simple."
"It's very difficult to wrap your arms around this subject of the various pros and cons of hormone replacement therapy," adds CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook.
About 200,000 cases of breast cancer had been expected in 2003; the drop means that about 14,000 fewer women actually were diagnosed with the disease.Dr. LaPook explains more about hormone replacement
FYI: Learn more about breast cancer
The drop also was seen in every single cancer registry that reports information to the federal government.
Researchers looked for a similar drop in other cancers, which could indicate something other than hormones was at work, "and we didn't see anything," said Kathy Cronin, a National Cancer Institute statistician who worked on the analysis.
When the 2003 numbers were first released a few months ago, they were grouped with 2001 and 2002 and portrayed as a leveling off of breast cancer after decades of steady rise. The big single-year drop was not pointed out because experts did not want to make too much of it without knowing whether the trend would continue.
However, Dr. Peter Ravdin, a breast cancer specialist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center who led the new analysis, said the single year drop is important regardless, because it was so huge and came after years of steady increases.
"We don't know about whether or not it's going to be a trend but we know for this year it was a significant effect," he said.
Doctors estimate that half of women who were taking hormones stopped after July 2002, when the federal Women's Health Initiative study was halted because more women taking estrogen/progestin pills developed breast cancer or heart problems.
That led to new warning labels on the drugs and doctor groups urging women to use the lowest dose for the shortest time possible.
"The hypothesis is entirely plausible, that the discontinuation of hormone replacement therapy could be having an effect," said Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society.
More than 8,000 breast cancer specialists from 80 countries are in San Antonio for the Charles A. Coltman Jr. Breast Cancer Symposium, the world's largest annual conference on breast cancer, which strikes 200,000 American women each year.
The next set of cancer statistics is due out in April.
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Not all hormones are the problem. The trouble comes from failure to realize all "hormones" are not the same, or bio-identical with what your own body needs, and what it would make, if it could.
Bio-identicals are exactly what the name implies-- identical to the molecular structure of your own hormones. From that vantage point, any other "hormone" is not really a hormone, at least, not one you want to buy in blind trust from the ever-enterprising pharmaceutical industry.
In principle, this applies to all drugs, not merely hormone substitutes. The FDA has been overly sympathetic to its drug industry clientele, to the point one recently disciplined FDA official was found to have stock in the very company whose trials and approvals he regulated.
American consumers are treated as paying guinea pigs by the pharaceuticals and aided and abetted by an overly plaint FDA. The FDA needs to end its days as a rest home for political hacks and start protecting American health-- the only purpose for which it was created.
For a discussion, see --
http://www.bio-identicalhormonesociety.com/hormone-testing-seminars.php
(be sure to use the entire, lengthy address above)
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I'll check with you when you reach 100-- if you have lingered that long, you probably will want to stay.
The party is over.
The party is over.
The party is over.
The party is over.
- by alphaa10-2009 December 14, 2006 5:33 PM EST
- This is yet another instance of the American public priding itself in having the "most innovative" medical science, then discovering they had only the most permissive federal regulation via FDA-- entirely more sympathetic and protective of its pharmaceutical industry clientele.
- Reply to this comment
See all 16 CommentsIn effect, the risks of artificial hormone therapy were eventually prominent enough to stall marketing "great products" designed to mimic natural human hormones, but not before they had taken an unnecessary toll of breast cancers and made a bundle for the pharmaceuticals. l
Those women picketing the FDA about silicone breast implants need to direct their attention at the real villain-- the pharmaceutical industry's insistence on marketing a profitable commercial substitute of what they should have been taking in the first place, bio-identical human hormones. Bio-identicals have a drastically improved patient safety profile, but never got the attention of pharmaceuticals or (not by coincidence) the FDA.