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Hormone treatment after menopause, already known to increase the risk of breast cancer, also makes it more likely that the cancer will be advanced and deadly, a study finds. Women who took hormones and developed breast cancer were more likely to have cancerous lymph nodes, a sign of more advanced disease, and were more likely to die from the disease than were breast cancer patients who had never taken hormones. The increased risks were relatively small and are not fully understood. But previous research has found that hormone treatment can cause delays in diagnosis by increasing breast density, making tumors...

SAN ANTONIO — Two new statistical analyses of Women's Health Initiative data persuasively indicate that the recent abrupt decline in breast cancer incidence in the United States is attributable to a dramatic drop in the use of estrogen-plus-progestin menopausal hormone therapy, and not—as skeptics have argued—to less utilization of mammography. Academic fencing over causality aside, the practical take-home message from the latest Women's Health Initiative (WHI) data analyses is that the breast cancer risk imparted by hormone therapy rises sooner and more steeply than previously recognized, and it swiftly declines after HT is discontinued, Dr. Rowan T. Chlebowski said at...

Associated Press SAN ANTONIO: Taking menopause hormones for five years doubles the risk for breast cancer, according to a new analysis of a big federal study that reveals the most dramatic evidence yet of the dangers of these still-popular pills. Even women who took estrogen and progestin pills for as little as a couple of years had a greater chance of getting cancer. And when they stopped taking them, their odds quickly improved, returning to a normal risk level roughly two years after quitting. Collectively, these new findings are likely to end any doubt that the risks outweigh the benefits...

PROTECT YOUR RIGHT TO CHOOSE COMPOUNDED BIO-IDENTICAL HORMONE MEDICATIONS THE FACTS: Recently, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, maker of Premarin & Prempro, (drugs derived from Pregnant Mares Urine – yes, horses pee) filed a Citizen’s Petition with the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) asking the FDA to impose harmful restrictions on the compounding and dispensing of Bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT). (Bio-identical hormones are manufactured to have the same molecular structure as the hormones made by your own body.) This petition would eliminate the availability of compounded bio-identical hormones, which are prescribed by healthcare providers and prepared by pharmacists, to meet the unique...

In a huge victory for pharmaceutical giant Wyeth, a Florida appeals court on Wednesday halted a class action suit that claimed its hormone replacement drug could harm hundreds of thousands of Florida women. A three-judge panel of the state's 3rd District Court of Appeal unanimously held in Wyeth Inc. v. Arlene Gottlieb that the claims were not common enough for the case to move forward as a class action. Instead, women who claim they may suffer future health problems because of their use of the drug Prempro will have to file individual suits against Wyeth. The Wyeth decision reverses a...