Progesterone to fight BC

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  • CatsRus
    CatsRus Member Posts: 310
    edited July 2015

    http://www.bbc.com/news/health-33444613

    after figuring my years on hormone replacement (bio-identical progesterone) may have caused my BC, I now find stopping it may have been my mistake after all..... (I stopped it 4 years before dx after a benign fibroadenoma was found and removed from the same breast that developed IDC)


  • mary625
    mary625 Member Posts: 1,056
    edited July 2015

    I am sceptical. One of my doctors said that it was the progesterone in the hormone replacement therapy that was the culprit. It will be interesting to see what further studies show.
  • vlnrph
    vlnrph Member Posts: 1,632
    edited July 2015

    The laboratory study seemed to be looking at tamoxifen with or without progesterone in terms of cellular inhibition. Having estrogen receptor blockade was key to the hormone being able to work.

    So, for catsrus, your history of 'bio-identical' supplementation is not really comparable. Thanks for the link to the abstract. Will try to a get look at the Nature article when I go to the library..

  • JohnSmith
    JohnSmith Member Posts: 651
    edited July 2015

    I'm confused by this news too.

    Last year on this forum, someone asked why there weren't any Progesterone (PR) blocking drugs.

    I asked an oncologist this question. He said that Tamoxifen blocks not only the Estrogen receptor (it's primary target), but also blocks the progesterone receptor (PR) in the process.

    He went on to say that in a broad sense, PR is a subset of ER.
    i.e. PR is an estrogen "regulated" protein.
    If your estrogen receptor isn't working (or is low), you'll likely have an inactive (or low) progesterone receptor as well.

  • dlb823
    dlb823 Member Posts: 9,430
    edited July 2015

    I've just skimmed the article, but when I finished my tx for Stage II bc back in 2009 and asked my onc about supplementing w/natural progesterone cream, which was being done by some alternative-minded BCO-sisters at the time, he told me that years ago -- pre Tamox & A/I's -- progesterone was actually a first-line tx for bc. According to him, it would work for a time, but the bc would always come back, as it still does with many therapies. Not sure how pertinent this is to the OP or discussion, but it's just something interesting I've never forgotten -- that at one time is was actually used to treat bc, and evidently did work, at least for some, for awhile.

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