Is there a solid link between the drop in cases and the big drop in women taking hormones?
It may be premature to call the link “absolutely solid,” Winer says. But it’s very plausible for a number of reasons. First, most of the drop occurred in women over age 50 — in other words, women who might previously have been taking estrogen or estrogen and progestin. Second, there is evidence that blocking estrogen can cause estrogen-sensitive cancers to stop growing or to shrink over the course of a few months. So when women stop taking hormones, the result could be that a tumor shrinks or perhaps even goes away. Why did so many women stop taking replacement hormone therapy? The medical community has long known that these drugs can increase the risk of breast cancer, at least to a modest degree. But before 2002, the consensus was that other health benefits offset that risk. In 2002, big studies came out indicating that the long-term use of hormone replacement therapy, particularly the combination of estrogen and progestin, “did not seem to convey the health benefits that people once
