It was reported a few years ago that women taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may have increased risk of getting breast cancer; what was uncertain then was how long a woman had to be taking HRT to create this risk.
Well, researchers have now found that the time frame is 5 years or more. Specifically, study results have shown that if someone takes HRT for 5 years she will be doubling her risk of getting breast cancer. Once a person discontinues HRT, however, that risk will drop back, after a year or so, to what it was prior to starting the HRT.
Patients diagnosed with breast cancer often ask me if taking HRT "caused" their cancer. Frankly, it really isn't clear if it is truly a cause or simply a catalyst. So what I usually tell patients is that HRT may have fueled the disease they were genetically disposed to, causing it to manifest itself earlier than it might have without HRT.
For women with hormone-receptor-positive disease, which means that estrogen stimulates their breast cancer cells to grow, HRT can serve as a form of fertilizer: 50 percent of breast cancers are hormone receptor positive, too.
So if you are taking HRT, meet with your doctor soon to determine if you really need to be on it. Ask him or her, too, how much HRT will increase your risk of getting breast cancer, and what are some of the alternative treatments for managing whatever symptoms you had that caused you to start taking HRT in the first place.