I thought this article was very interesting because I know several people who have had or now have breast cancer. It talks about a protein, PGRMC1, that has been found to block cell death in breast cancer cells in response to hormone replacement therapy. Past studies have shown that hormone replacement therapy can increase your risk of developing breast cancer, but this study has identified the protein responsible which could lead to drugs or therapies that would block its activity increasing the death of cancerous cells.
I knew that hormone replacement therapy wasn't great for your body, but I wasn't aware of how closely tied it was to cancer. Almost all the older women in my family take some sort of hormone replacement to battle the symptoms of menopause, so I never thought anything about it. I am glad they found PGRMC1, and I hope they find more.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting. I've always wondered about hormone replacement therapy, but I did not think that it would possibly entail serious problems.
ReplyDeleteWell, I am sure this finding is being considered before doctors prescribe this to future female patients. Though menopause, for some women, have some awful symptoms to where it is hard to sleep or to do normal tasks. But I certainly don't it is worth trading them for the risk of cancer. If there is no alternative medication to target directly menopause, perhaps they should just prescribe alternative meds or activities that target the symptoms instead.
And, remember earlier this semester when Dr. E was talking about how water bottles and coke cans containing estrogen mimics have a correlation with breast cancer? I wonder if these mimics cause a same or similar problem as the synthetic estrogen--the overexpression of PGRMC1 causing lack of necessary breast cell death.
I know they were talking mainly about hormone therapy replacement, but I used to take progestin. It's the main birth control doctors prescribe when a woman is breastfeeding because it's not supposed to pass to the baby. Thankfully I wasn't on it long, but I know many mom's that took it while they were breastfeeding. It is also prescribed in combination with estrogen as a contraceptive. Progestrin has been used for years, so I'm curious why they only mention the hormone replacement therapy aspect of progestrin. I wonder the results if they tracked women who had progestrin earlier in life + HRT, just HRT and just progestrin earlier in life.. But at the same time, how can you expect to alter some highly regulated function of your body and not get a negative result?
ReplyDeleteSide note, I looked at some articles that talked about "natural progesterone" not leading to increased risk of breast cancer. I tried to get the original paper that this review was written about but it wouldn't let me access it. The review article only talks about progestrin, but another paper I found says "In the study, researchers used both the native hormone, progesterone, and a synthetic compound, progestin – obtaining the same results." (from http://phys.org/news/2011-01-progesterone-breast-cancer.html#jCp)
Definitely stuff to think about, because it seems like HRT is the thing to do these days to bypass menopause symptoms..