What is "hormone resistant?"

Anonymous

My sister was diagnosed with breast cancer about three months after my diagnosis.

Her diagnosis is almost exactly like mine. Like me, she will have a lumpectomy and then radiation for three weeks. However, they told her that she was hormone resistant so she may need chemo.

Can someone please explain hormone resistant. I did so some searching about this topic but much is over my head. Am I correct in assuming she can't take hormone therapy of any type? If so, why will she need chemo?

Thank you!

Lula73

it sounds like your suster’s BC is triple negative meaning hormones don’t hurt or help her fight the cancer.

Meow13

Did your sister get tamoxifen or another therapy that didn't work? Or are they guessing hormone therapy won't be effective enough due to oncodx?

I asked my oncologist if there was a way to tell if AI drugs were working, my tumors were removed. He said no way of telling. I guess if the cancer stays away they work, maybe?

Anonymous

I don't know how they determined that my sister was hormone resistant. We live 3000 miles apart and there is a three hour time difference so we didn't talk long last night after a four hour meeting with her cancer team. I do know that she said that they recommend chemo because she can't take hormones.

I didn't realize that was an option. I personally don't want to take hormones and I'm wondering if chemo would be as effective. Not that I want to take chemo either but I want to know all my options when I meet with my oncologist in three weeks. She wants me to take an aromatase inhibitor. I am very concerned about the side effects.

ksusan

Hormone receptivity is determined during biopsy or surgery. If your cancer is "hormone receptive," that's good news in that AIs or Tamoxifen (for pre-menopausal women, mostly) reduce the rate of recurrence. Non-hormone receptive cancer, which it sounds like your sister has, doesn't respond to AIs or Tamoxifen, so chemo is likely to be recommended since there isn't another way to kill/starve the tumor cells systemically.

For you, ask your oncologist how much each treatment is thought to reduce your risk of recurrence, which is based on the characteristics of the cancer you had. This varies by person. For example, chemo reduced my estimated risk by around 20%,and radiation by only a few %, and Tamoxifen by about 15%.

gb2115

They probably mean that her cancer cells were hormone receptor negative, meaning she will need chemotherapy as her treatment, since hormone therapy won't work.

However, if you have hormone receptor positive cells, taking hormone therapy is standard of care for your type of cancer, because it starves any remaining cancer cells of what they need to function.

Anonymous

Thank you everyone for your replies!

Lula73

viewfinder- the hormone therapy they refer to is not adding hormones, it’s blocking them. It’s actually called anti-hormone therapy but usually gets shortened to just hormone therapy which can be very misleading. Just wanted to clarify that for you.