Hormone Rx May Protect Women With Breast Cancer Gene

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Many women with a BRCA mutation elect to have their ovaries removed at a relatively young age to reduce their breast cancer risk.

For this matched case-control study, researchers analyzed tumor samples from 472 postmenopausal women with a BRCA 1 mutation, some of who had undergone endocrine therapy (removing estrogen) before surgery for breast cancer. The other women also carried the BRCA1 mutation but had no history of breast cancer.

Women who had used HRT at some point in their lives had a 42 percent reduced risk of developing breast cancer compared with women who had never used hormone therapy, the researchers found.

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Women who had undergone surgical menopause seemed to experience a greater risk reduction than women who had undergone natural menopause, the team noted.

It's not clear what mechanism is at play here, except that women with BRCA mutations are more likely to develop estrogen-receptor negative cancers, which are not fueled by estrogen.

A second study in the same issue of the journal describes a model, the preoperative endocrine prognostic index (PEP), which predicts the risk of relapse in women who have breast cancer.

This information should help clinicians identify appropriate treatments for individual patients, said researchers led by Matthew Ellis, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

More information

There's more on the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 mutations at the National Cancer Institute.

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