Reply to NIH Study regarding HRT and BReast cancer

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was just diagnosed with breast cancer. No family history of it. I'm 49 and was put on HRT 3 years ago to manage perimenopause symptoms.

Note, my breast cancer is early stage, and is treatable, so I will hopefully not be counted in any "mortality" numbers, but still it's so much to go through (surgery, radiation and guess what?! Bc my cancer is positive for hormone receptors, I have to take basically anti-estrogen meds for the next several years to make sure it doesn't come back).  Anecdotal, obviously, but HRT has definitely not been worth this.

I think the guidance will eventually shake out at not starting HRT until after full menopause.

Also, for the many women who have dense breast tissue (I do), that can hide the earliest detection of a breast tumor. Density naturally does go down in full menopause so that's another factor to consider if you're perimenopausal and taking HRT, that any cancer might be more difficult to spot.  Make sure you're vigilant about screenings.
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I’m sorry to hear about your diagnosis. I’m glad they caught it early and I wish you the best.

I guess I’m confused because aren’t the HRT dosages really low? And aren’t women on a higher doses of estrogen earlier in life when most of us are on birth control? [b]And don’t estrogen rate skyrocket when we are pregnant and yet we don’t tend to see a correlation with women getting diagnosed with breast cancer after pregnancy. 
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It seems like it’s just too simple to say estrogen for hormone replacement therapy is causing cancer. The fact of the matter is breast cancer is rising in young women and yet very few young women are on replacement therapy, especially since the big study in the early 2000s hormone replacement therapy rates have plunged so there’s clearly more to the story on why younger women are getting breast cancer and it’s not just estrogen or hormone replacement therapy.

I really fear we’re missing the forest through the trees when people just lump these early rates of cancer as HRT when most women being diagnosed early, have not started HRT yet. [/quote]

Actually cancer is detected in 1/1000 pregnancies, with the most common types being breast, cervical and lymphoma. There is mixed thinking with regard to whether these cancers are detected by increased rates of perinatal imaging or whether the pregnancies themselves and the increased hormonal load are triggers for the cancers - some doctors and researchers believe it is the latter, especially given the trend toward older women having pregnancies.

I had a breast spot detected by early mammo at 35, which was ordered by a new GYN who was unfamiliar with my dense, lumpy breast tissue and believed she'd palpated a lump during breast exam. Turned out I had a small something too deep into the breast for her to have felt it, and another GYN recommended ultrasound monitoring which I had for a couple of years every 6 months. I had a pregnancy at 38 which ended in miscarriage in the second trimester, and after that my then GYN insisted I have needle biopsy because of the risk of pregnancy hormones triggering cancer growth. The spot ended up being a fibroadenoma and the needle biopsy removed it completely.

However, during that pregnancy I developed a small nerf football sized growth on one of my ovaries, and it was recommended I have it surgically removed because CAT scan could not rule out cancer. It ended up being benign, but the removal of that ovary - and part of the other which had a small cyst so the surgeon decided on her own iniative whilst I was under sedation to cut that one up, too - put me into a hellish perimenopause which wrecked my health for the next decade. Until I got on HRT.[/quote]

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