Saslow, who was not involved in the study, says that the new finding probably won’t change current recommendations for using hormones.
“The bottom line is, we’re already telling women, ‘Don’t use it.’ If you need to use it, use it for the lowest dose and the shortest amount of time, but try not to use it.”
To stave off menopausal symptoms, some women are now turning to “bio-identical hormones”, which are made in a laboratory from wild yams or soy; traditional hormone therapies are often derived from the urine of pregnant horses. However, bio-identical hormones have not been shown to be any safer than conventional hormone therapy, says Saslow.
Also, it’s not clear if the drop in hormone-therapy use will result in a large drop in ovarian cancer cases, as has been seen with breast cancer. “Given the absolute risk, we’re not going to see much drop,” say Saslow. “We may see a little bit.”
An estimated 21,550 new cases of ovarian cancer will be diagnosed in the United States in 2009, according to the American Cancer Society, compared with 192,000 invasive breast cancer cases.
Unlike breast cancer, there is no early screening test to detect ovarian cancer when it is in its most treatable stages, and its symptoms—bloating, pelvic or abdominal pain, difficulty eating or feeling full quickly, and urinary symptoms—are vague.
As a result, ovarian cancer is usually detected after it has spread outside the ovaries.
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Comments (1)
Debbie Saslow states that bio-identical hormones that are derived from plant sources, are no more safer than estrogen from pregnant horse urin, then combined with “progestin”, a chemical that does not react the same as progesterone in the female body. That statement is not true. There are clinical studies all over the world that prove plant-based bio-identical hormones do not harm. The 2002 Woman’s Health Initiative studied the unnatural horse-urin estrogen and the chemical progestin effects in these unlucky, misinformed women untill the study was stopped because of a high percentage of the women developed breast, ovarian, etc. cancer.