Hormone Replacement Therapy and Breast Cancer - Essay Example

the help of two cohort studies, two case control studies, one cross sectional study, and one clinically randomized study. Before that, we should at least know the different modes of hormone replacement therapy. Unopposed estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) was the treatment in 1960s and 1970s (Kennedy, D.L. et al, 1985). Now, the favored prescribing practice is combination HRT (CHRT), that is, adding a progesterone to the entire monthly cycle either as continuous combined replacement therapy (CCRT) or a part of the cycle as sequential estrogen plus progestin therapy (SEPRT) (Ross K. R. et al, 2000).

The studies designed by Gapstur, Morrow, and Sellers and Feigelson, Jonas, Teras, Thun, and Calle, are two prospective cohort studies that have been analyzed by the present investigator. These studies attempted to refute the association of HRT and breast cancer, and failure to refute this concept strengthened confidence in it. In both these studies, they identified the participants who do not yet have disease but were on HRT. These groups in both these studies were observed over time to determine the frequency of new incidence of disease in these populations.

These studies had been designed in such a way that these would provide the best results as opposed to the case control studies. The case control studies on the other hand use patients who already have disease or suspected to have breast cancer, and these studies that have been analyzed here look back to study the difference from those who have proven absence of the disease. The case control studies that have been used are those designed by Evis Sala, Ruth Warren, Jenny McCann, Stephen Duffy,.

Evis Sala, Ruth Warren, Jenny McCann, Stephen Duffy, Robert Luben, and Nicholas Day, High-Risk Mammographic Parenchymal Patterns, Hormone Replacement Therapy And Other Risk Factors: A Case-Control Study, Int. J. Epidemiol., Aug 2000; 29: 629 - 636. Lorne J. Hofseth, Ahmed M. Raafat, Janet R. Osuch, Dorothy R. Pathak, Carol A. Slomski, and Sandra Z. Haslam, Hormone Replacement Therapy with Estrogen or Estrogen plus Medroxyprogesterone Acetate Is Associated with Increased Epithelial Proliferation in the Normal Postmenopausal Breast, J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab., Dec 1999; 84: 4559 - 4565.