HRT (hormone replacement therapy) increases the risk of breast cancer more than we’ve been told-if you’re a white woman who’s not overweight. If that describes you, the drug increases your risk by more than 20 per cent.
The risk has been identified for years, but researchers believed it was lower than the 20 per cent now being estimated. Previous studies included all women taking HRT, and this reduced the average risk because researchers from Chicago University have now discovered that women aren’t equal when it comes to the cancer-causing effects of HRT.
Black women and those who are overweight seem to have a far lower risk from HRT than white and Hispanic women and those with a normal BMI (body-mass index). Women who have dense breast tissue were also at higher risk. The Chicago researchers assessed the new risk profile after they analysed 1.64 million mammograms, which included 9,300 cases of breast cancer.
(Source: JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2013; doi: 10.1093/jnci/djt207).
