Hormones And Their Effect on Mammograms

A study involving 173 Danish women who under went screening mammographys between the eyars of 1993 and 2007 yielded some interesting results. They found that those that used hormones had more false-positve results than women who never used hormone replacement therapy. They found that of 39, 104 women who took the hormone replacement therapy that 602 had false positve results, and they needed further testing. The remaining, 0.8 percent of the 133, 638 women had nver used hormone therapy. If you used patches, and injections the women had twice the false postive risk.

This was quite an interesting study. More research needs to be done to see what hormones are safest and don’t result in false positive results.

Hormone replalcement therapy increases breast density. As women get older, typically their breast tissue will be less dense and more fatty. That is not always the case.  Younger women have more breast density. I wonder if it could be due to al their hormones. Sounds like something I said years ago. I still say they need to reduce hormones in our diet, hormone free meat, minicing hormones, etc.

If you stop hormone replacement therapy, your risk of a false positive mammogram should go down. In the United States in 2008 they found that women who had been on oral HRT for five years, the odds of their having an inaccurate mammogram declined after women stop taking the hormones. Now this doesn’t seem to go with women more at risk for breast cancer as they age, does it?

Some women take hormone replacement therapy until they die. They feel it has helped them, inspite of the risk. These women take it to reduce their menopausal symptoms. For relatives it was hot flashes, etc.