VOA常速英语2008年-Cancer Risk Persists in Women Who Stop Hormone

By Jessica Berman
Washington
04 March 2008
 

According to the results of a large U.S. study, older women who used hormone¹ therapy to ease the symptoms of menopause and then discontinued it remain at increased risk of cancer. Researchers voiced surprise at the finding because their study also showed that other negative health effects disappear once women stop hormone therapy. VOA's Jessica Berman reports.

The findings are the outgrowth of a large study on hormone replacement² therapy, or HRT, in menopausal and post-menopausal women called the Women's Health Initiative, sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The Initiative was launched in 1991 to see whether supplemental female hormones³ would reduce hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause in 16,600 aging women while at the same time protecting them against heart disease and osteoporosis, which causes brittle⁴ bones.

But the study was abruptly⁵ halted in 2002 when the data showed that a combination of the hormones, estrogen and progestin, in menopausal and post-menopausal women increased their risk of breast cancer.

Further analysis also showed women on HRT were at greater risk for heart disease and stroke.

Investigators⁶ then followed up with almost 1,600 women from 2002 until 2005. Those results are published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Rowan Chlebowski is a medical oncologist at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute and one of the study's principle investigators.

Chlebowski says it appears the risk of heart disease returns to normal after a woman stops taking the hormones, and that is good news.

"But the cancer increase was unexpected," said Chlebowski. "It raises just a new concern about [the] estrogen plus progestin kind of use."

At the time the trial was stopped, women on HRT had a 25 percent increased risk of breast cancer compared to women who were not on hormone therapy.

In their 2.5-year follow-up, the investigators reported the 25 percent risk of breast cancer persisted and, with the exception of colon⁷ cancer, there was a slightly increased risk of other cancers, including lung cancer.

Robert Wallace is a professor of epidemiology at the University of Iowa and one of the researchers who tracked study participants from 2002 through 2005.

Wallace says the large, carefully controlled hormone study leaves little doubt that HRT increases the risk of cancer.

"This is a randomized trial," he said. "It's an experiment, and that gives us a fair degree of certainty that this was related to the drug."

But Chlebowski says younger women entering menopause should not become alarmed by the findings. He says short-term use of hormone replacement therapy is not likely to be harmful.

"What we're saying here now is that taking a short term [treatment] for symptoms, which many women have, seems still like a very good idea, said Chlebowski. "But I think the concept that we can reduce disease by taking a pill and predicting what's going to happen ten years later sounds like it's a very difficult process."

The study's authors recommend that women who received hormone replacement therapy with estrogen and progestin for 3.5 to 8.5 years undergo regular cancer screenings.

1 hormone   

n.荷尔蒙，激素，内分泌

参考例句：

• Hormone implants are used as growth boosters.激素植入物被用作生长辅助剂。
• This hormone interacts closely with other hormones in the body.这种荷尔蒙与体內其他荷尔蒙紧密地相互作用。

2 replacement   

n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品

参考例句：

• We are hard put to find a replacement for our assistant.我们很难找到一个人来代替我们的助手。
• They put all the students through the replacement examination.他们让所有的学生参加分班考试。

3 hormones   

n. 荷尔蒙，激素 名词hormone的复数形式

参考例句：

• This hormone interacts closely with other hormones in the body. 这种荷尔蒙与体內其他荷尔蒙紧密地相互作用。
• The adrenals produce a large per cent of a man's sex hormones. 肾上腺分泌人体的大部分性激素。

4 brittle   

adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的

参考例句：

• The pond was covered in a brittle layer of ice.池塘覆盖了一层易碎的冰。
• She gave a brittle laugh.她冷淡地笑了笑。

5 abruptly   

adv.突然地，出其不意地

参考例句：

• He gestured abruptly for Virginia to get in the car.他粗鲁地示意弗吉尼亚上车。
• I was abruptly notified that a half-hour speech was expected of me.我突然被通知要讲半个小时的话。

6 investigators   

n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• This memo could be the smoking gun that investigators have been looking for. 这份备忘录可能是调查人员一直在寻找的证据。
• The team consisted of six investigators and two secretaries. 这个团队由六个调查人员和两个秘书组成。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 colon   

n.冒号，结肠，直肠

参考例句：

• Here,too,the colon must be followed by a dash.这里也是一样，应当在冒号后加破折号。
• The colon is the locus of a large concentration of bacteria.结肠是大浓度的细菌所在地。