Hormone Replacement Therapy was a preferred solution for relieving some of the pressures of menopause in women such as hot flashes and insomnia, until a study came out in 2002 that revealed that HRT can increase the risk of heart disease, stroke and breast cancer. These findings complicated the solution of doing the therapy, and led to a dramatic reduction in its use. Now a new study complicates this even further, since it claims that statistical studies show that women taking the therapy (which involves the use of estrogen) can reduce their risk of colon cancer (link to article):
The studies presented at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research further complicate the debate about HRT, used to relieve the effects of menopause
including hot flashes and insomnia. "Women who did use these drugs had a 28 percent lower incidence rate than women who did not use these drugs," Limsui said in a statement. "But we still don't know how estrogen compounds work in cancer prevention, which is intriguing."
Women who used hormone-based contraceptive pills, for instance, did not have any different risk of colon cancer. "Based on our findings, we need to continue exploring the cancer pathways that might be affected by these hormones," Limsui said. A second study presented at the same meeting also showed HRT might protect against colon cancer, which is diagnosed in 54,000 US women a year and which kills 25,000 -- making it the third-leading cancer killer of women behind lung cancer and breast cancer.
This is a very interesting piece of research, and would need much more analysis to validate, since it would complicate the issues around HRT.
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