Hormone replacement therapy promotes ovarian cancer

Hormone therapy during menopause increases the risk of ovarian cancer

02/13/2015

Many women show during menopause complaints such as hot flashes, mood swings or sleep disorders due to hormonal fluctuations. Although the so-called hormone replacement therapy offers relief here, but it can also be accompanied by a significant increase in ovarian cancer risk, so the result of a current, in the journal „The Lancet“ published study.

The British scientists of the „Collaborative Group on Epidemiological Studies of Ovarian Cancer“ report in the journal that the application of hormone replacement therapy against the typical symptoms of menopause had initially increased rapidly in the 1990s and then dropped abruptly in the 2000s after publication of the first critical study results in half. The application has remained largely stable in the United States and the United Kingdom since 2010, with approximately six million users - despite known risks. For example, two large US studies have found that women are more likely to develop breast cancer and cardiovascular disease as a result of hormone treatment „Mirror online“. In addition, an increase in the risk of ovarian cancer has now been found in the current study by the British researchers.

Increased ovarian cancer when using hormone therapy
The scientists around Richard Peto from Oxford University evaluated in their study, the data sets of the individual participants (21488 total) from 52 epidemiological studies from Australia, Europe and North America. They looked for possible links between the use of hormone replacement therapy and the later development of ovarian cancer. Among the prospective study participants, 12,110 postmenopausal women developed ovarian cancer, with 55 percent (6,601) previously receiving hormone therapy, according to the researchers. Overall, women who received hormone replacement therapy for at least five years from the age of 50 had an additional ovarian cancer case per 1,000 users of hormone therapy and an additional death per 1,700 users. The increased risk of ovarian cancer was largely or completely causal, the researchers write.

Even shorter use of hormone therapy increases the risk
In addition, the researchers found in the data analysis that women who had received hormone therapy for less than five years also had an increased risk of ovarian cancer, reported „Mirror online“. Both estrogen and estrogen-progesterone combination increases the likelihood of developing a tumor. In the different types of tumors, however, the connection between the increase in risk and the hormone therapy was quite different. In the prospective studies, the most common tumor types were serous and endometrioid tumors, the researchers write. Although the effects of hormone therapy on ovarian cancer risk are unequivocal, researchers from the US Institute of Health have come to the conclusion that this will not lead to a fundamental reassessment of the risk of hormone therapy „Mirror online“. Not least because ovarian cancer is relatively rare in comparison to breast cancer and cardiovascular diseases and their risk is eventually increased by the hormone replacement therapy.

Hormone replacement therapy in Germany
However, hormone replacement therapy in menopausal women is much less popular than, for example, the United States anyway. The health risks are evaluated very critically, even if the hormone therapy can be used to alleviate the symptoms of menopause. On the incidence of ovarian cancer reported in Germany „Mirror online“ citing the figures of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) that in 2010 in this country 7,790 women were diagnosed with ovarian cancer and nearly 5,600 died of ovarian cancer. In addition to hormone therapy, overweight and childlessness or infertility would be mentioned as risk factors. (Fp)