Estrogen's Role in Breast Cancer Can Fluctuate

(HealthDay News) -- Is estrogen breast cancer's friend or foe?

A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which analyzed data from the massive Women's Health Initiative, suggested the latter when it found a reduced risk of breast cancer in women who had been on short-term estrogen therapy.

This seemed to contradict years of cautions that estrogen therapy -- once widely prescribed as an antidote for the symptoms of menopause and to prevent chronic diseases -- fuels estrogen receptor-positive breast cancers.

In fact, this wily hormone can be both, according to an editorial in the April 10 issue of Cancer Prevention Research.

"Estrogen is bad at the right time, and estrogen is good at the right time," said editorial co-author V. Craig Jordan, considered the "father" of tamoxifen and other anti-estrogen treatments for breast cancer. Read more...

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