Herbal Health

There was frightening discovery in 1976, when the highly respected New England Journal of Medicine reported a study linking menopausal oestrogens to an increase in breast cancer. Numerous studies since then have confirmed this finding, showing that oestrogen can increase the risk of breast cancer by up to 60 per cent.

Is there any protection then for the breasts by combining oestrogen and progestogen? The answer seems to be no, and combined HRT may even increase the risk. A landmark study in 1989 of 23,244 women which was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine found that women using HRT had twice the risk of breast cancer after nine years. The most worrying finding was that those women who were taking combined oestrogen and progestogen had over Jour times the risk of developing breast cancer after six years’ use. They concluded from the incidence of breast cancer in those women taking HRT that breast cancer ‘is not prevented and may even be increased by the addition of progestogens’.

An editorial in the same edition of the New England Journal of Medicine commented that the findings confirm early results that oestrogen plus progestogen could be more carcinogenic (cancer forming) than oestrogen alone/ However, the comment continued, ‘The data are not conclusive enough to warrant any immediate change in the way we approach hormone replacement.’

By now you should be speechless. But in 1992 the same research team announced that they had followed up these 23,244 women over the intervening four years and found the same risks for breast cancer with oestrogen alone that they had found in 1989. However, that the breast cancer risk of taking opposed HRT (oestrogen and progestogen) was even greater than they had originally thought.

I have seen women who have been put on HRT to help with menopausal symptoms (such as hot flushes, etc.) and then been told to take Tamoxifen (the anti-oestrogen hormone) to help protect them against the risk of breast cancer,  which  might  be  caused  as  a  side  effect  from  taking the  HRT.

Tamoxifen has a list of side effects of its own (noted in the British National Formulary, a drug reference book published by the British Medical Association and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain) including rashes, alopecia (hair loss) and visual disturbances. It is possible that these women will later be given more medication to help get rid of the side effects caused by the Tamoxifen (which was, as you remember, given to reduce the side effects of the HRT in the first place). Interestingly, the first side effect mentioned for Tamoxifen in the British National Formulary is hot flushes! More HRT needed?

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