Claims that falling use of hormone replacement therapy by women led to reductions in breast cancer rates have no basis in fact, researchers claimed today.
Thousands of women ceased routine use of HRT after a series of reports at the beginning of the century linking it to breast cancer.
Five years later researchers were claiming that breast cancer rates had fallen after the revelations.
The analysis in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care claims that rates of breast cancer began falling before the slump in HRT use.
This was in 1999 while it was only after 2002 that HRT rates fell by 18%, they say.
Professor Samuel Shapiro, of the University of Cape Town Medical School, Cape Town, South Africa, writes: "Based on the observed trends in the incidence of breast cancer following the decline in HRT use, the ecological evidence is too limited either to support or refute the possibility that HRT causes cancer."
The study is the latest in a series of moves to rehabilitate HRT, which experts say need not be used as crudely as it was 20 years ago.
Writing in the journal Nick Panay, of the Queen Charlotte & Chelsea and Chelsea and Westminster Hospitals, London, UK, says: "If there is a risk, the risk is small, and the benefits of HRT can be life altering; it is vital that we keep this in perspective."
Does hormone replacement therapy (HRT) cause breast cancer? An application of causal principles to three studies Part 5. Trends in breast cancer incidence in relation to the use of HRT Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care doi: 10.1136/jfprhc-2012-100508 [abstract]
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