Spes, I'm no expert but I was told that if estrogen receptor is positive, you can be given hormonal treatment, rather than standard chemotherapy. I was also told, the first time I was diagnosed with DCIS, that both the estrogen and the progesterone was highly positive, too. This second time the doctor gave me confusing messages: the DCIS is higher grade and more aggressive, but the DCIS is so low grade that they don't need to test for progesterone or HER2, only the estrogen receptor ??? I am now thoroughly confused. As I understand it, though, positive progesterone is a good thing-- evidently because if both receptors are positive it's more likely to be low grade DCIS. There's something else one cancer specialist said. He said breast cancers are on a continuum: they are estrogen positive when it's early stage and lose estrogen receptors through time.

There are drugs to try to lower the estrogen, as BarredOwl wrote, and some women have said that certain foods may lower the level of aromatase in your body which will lower the level of estrogen. They suggest eating white button mushrooms to lower aromatase and thus lower estrogen. I can't vouch for that one way or the other because I can't eat them for months and then get tested for aromatase levels. I found out that consuming alcoholic drinks raises estrogen levels and sugar levels. I don't drink alcohol and haven't for years, so that's not how or why I got DCIS. There is also a study wherein the scientists said eating mangoes can inhibit DCIS. I have eaten so many mangoes...

Pyrogallol, a microbial metabolites from mango tannins (Mangifera Indica L.) suppresses breast cancer ductal carcinomain situ proliferation in both in vitro and in vivo

http://www.fasebj.org/content/30/1_Supplement/688....

Spes--it does take a lot of reading to sort it all out, but one thing that resonated with me was that with ER/PR positive cells, at least they're *trying* to do the right thing, because of course normal breast cells are fueled by hormones.

The hormonal treatment has nothing to do with chemo. DCIS does not require chemo, although radiation is often recommended.

I don't have the tamoxifen/AI-type drugs available to me because of my ER/PR status but I sure would take them if I could because they are proven to decrease the probability of recurrence.

Bottom line is you are still early in the process. You'll have time to do your research and make decisions. Hang in there.

Yes, as Special K says being both highly ER+ and PR+ is not unusual or particularly diagnostic of a more aggressive cancer. For what it’s worth, I was >90% on both ER and PR.

I was told that, too, that DCIS is never treated with standard chemo, but can be treated with aromatase inhibitors, SERMS, anti-hormonal treatments. This cancer specialist said that very early breast cancers all start out as estrogen positive and through time estrogen receptors are lost until the breast has few receptors for estrogen. He did not mention DCIS when he was talking about that. There are other types of treatments, like targeting androgen receptors, for estrogen negative breast cancers that don't respond to estrogen-reducing drugs.