Alarm at ‘HRT Link’ to Ovarian Cancer

A THOUSAND British women may have died from ovarian cancer since 1991 because they had hormone replacement therapy (HRT), say researchers.The death toll estimate emerged from the biggest investigation of links between HRT and cancer ever undertaken.Findings from the Million Women Study suggest that HRT use in the UK resulted in 1,300 extra cases of ovarian cancer between 1991 and 2005. Of these women, 1,000 died of the disease.Previous results from the same study have linked HRT with an increased risk of breast and womb cancer.However, the research was strongly challenged by Dr John Stevenson, an HRT expert at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London, and chairman of the charity Women’s Health Concern.He said the Million Women Study had already been criticised by the scientific community over the way it was conducted and claimed the results “fly in the face of cancer biology”.Dr Stevenson said: “HRT must be saving a lot of women from other causes of mortality.”In fact, when HRT is taken by women in their 50s – the age group for whom it’s intended – there is a significant reduction in death rate.”The Million Women Study research indicates that a woman’s risk of suffering ovarian cancer returns to normal within a few years of giving up HRT.To put the findings in perspective, the results mean that over a period of five years there is likely to be one extra case of ovarian cancer among every 2,500 women receiving hormone replacement therapy.However the strength of the association between HRT and ovarian cancer has alarmed experts involved in the study.Their leader, Professor Valerie Beral, director of Cancer Research UK’s epidemiology unit at Oxford University, said: “The results of this study are worrying because they show that not only does HRT increase the risk of getting ovarian cancer, it also increases a woman’s risk of dying of ovarian cancer.”This study, along with our previous research, clearly demonstrates the cancer risks of taking HRT.”Ovarian cancer is the fourth most common female cancer in the UK. Each year about 6,700 women develop the disease and 4,600 die from it.The Million Women Study, largely funded by Cancer Research UK, recruited 948,576 postmenopausal women, representing a quarter of all women aged 50 to 64 in the UK. About a third of the women were undergoing HRT, and a further fifth had received it in the past.The women, none of whom had a previous record of cancer, had their progress monitored for up to seven years.During the follow-up period a total of 2,273 women developed ovarian cancer and 1,591 died from the disease.Researchers calculated from the findings how many extra women exposed to HRT were likely to have suffered and died from ovarian cancer between 1991 and 2005.The findings are published today in an early on-line edition of The Lancet medical journal. HRT is used to combat unpleasant symptoms of the menopause, including hot flushes, vaginal dryness and night sweats. According to the GP Research Database, the number of UK women using HRT halved from two million in 2002 to one million in 2005.

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