I’ve been following the news reports about a sharp decline in breast cancer rates that seem to coincide with reduced usage of the Wyeth estrogen drug, Prempro.
That is certainly encouraging news, though the likelihood that a major prescription drug substantially increases cancer risk shouldn’t be a surprise.
I’ve been wondering about a related matter: What, if any, is the role of the so-called bioidentical hormones made from soy and other plant materials?
Last April, I wrote a BusinessWeek.com column about Wyeth’s attack against pharmacists and others making bioidentical hormones. Wyeth claimed the natural hormones were potentially dangerous to women because they weren’t overseen as closely as Wyeth’s Prempro by the federal Food and Drug Administration. But, of course, Wyeth was obviously concerned that the bioidentical hormones’ popularity was cutting into sales of Prempro.
What turned my head while doing research for the column was reading hundreds of letters women wrote to the FDA about how their lives had been improved by bioidentical hormones. Many of the women said they had previously taken Prempro, with disastrous results.
So my question when news of the decline in breast cancer rates came out was this: Do bioidentical hormones present the same risks for women that Prempro does? Today a New York Times article raises just that question—in a provocative way, for the Times—as part of an interview with a prominent researcher specializing in estrogen and breast cancer. The interviewer: “Some people suggest that the real problem was that the hormones women were taking were artificial or were given in artificial ways. Prempro, for example, gets its estrogen from pregnant mares. Some say other hormone preparations, for example, so-called bioidentical hormones, would be safe. Do you agree?”
The researcher answers the question only by inference. “We’ve been talking about women’s ovaries producing estrogen and progesterone. When a woman enters menopause, hormone levels drop dramatically. The longer you bathe a woman’s breast in these hormones, the more likely she will have cancer…And that is with natural hormones, the ones in your body.”
My guess is the researcher hasn’t spent any time or energy examining bioidentical hormones, but didn’t want to say so. Instead, he applied his theory to an area he hadn’t researched.
I actually had a discussion a week ago about this subject with a friend who is a physician, and his response was similar to the scientist interviewed by the Times. Except he added another caveat: The reason we have the FDA is to make sure professionals monitor the drugs people take. When people have the freedom to take things like bioidentical hormones on their own, they are putting themelves in danger.
Needless to say, we had a lengthy discussion. My feeling is people should have the freedom to take whatever supplements or plant-based materials they want, and that it’s up to them to evaluate the risks. Based on the letters I read from women taking bioidentical hormones, many are even willing to increase their risk of getting breast cancer sometime in the future so as to live a much more comfortable life today.
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