Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, 02/02/2016 Kotsopoulos J, et al.

This study suggest that a short course of HRT should not be contra–indicated for BRCA1 mutation carriers who have undergone menopause and who have no personal history of cancer.

Methods

• The researchers conducted a case–control analysis of 432 matched pairs of women with a BRCA1 mutation.
• Detailed information on HRT use after menopause (duration, type, age at first/last use, formulation) was obtained from a research questionnaire administered at the time of study enrollment.
• Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate the odds ratio (OR) and 95 % confidence intervals (CI) associated with HRT use.

Results

• The mean duration of HRT use after menopause was 4.3 years among the cases and 4.4 years among the controls (P = 0.83).
• The adjusted OR for breast cancer comparing all women who ever used HRT to those who never used HRT was 0.80 (95 % CI 0.55–1.16; P = 0.24).
• Findings did not differ by type of menopause (natural vs. surgical), by recency of use, by duration of use, and by formulation type.