- 作者：Caroline Antoine ; Lieveke Ameye ; Marianne Paesmans ; Serge Rozenberg
- 关键词：Hormone replacement therapy ; Breast cancer ; Incidence ; Belgium
- 刊名：Maturitas
- 出版年：2012
- 出版时间：August, 2012
- 年：2012
- 卷：72
- 期：4
- 页码：317-323
- 全文大小：622 K
Background
Several studies reported a decrease in breast cancer (BC) incidence, subsequent to the decrease in hormone replacement therapy (HRT) use.Aim
Although Belgium has one of the highest incidences of BC in Europe and one of the highest rates of HRT use, we were unable, in a previous study, to observe a significant association between BC incidence and HRT changes. In this updated report we added the BC data from incidence years 2007 and 2008.
Material and method
We used European standardized incidence rates for invasive BC in the age class 50-69 years for Flanders (1999-2008), Brussels and Wallonia (2004-2008), obtained from IMS Health HRT sales data (1997-2008) for Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia. The association between BC incidence and HRT use was analyzed using generalized estimating equations (GEE) in order to take into consideration the dependency between the subsequent data points.
Results
There was a significant association between the invasive BC incidence rate and estimated rate of HRT users in the previous year: p-value < 0.001.
Conclusion
Although this study is hampered by a number of limitations, these data support the idea that the drop in BC incidence can be partly attributed to the decrease in HRT use. Since HRT remains the most used medication for climacteric symptoms, we encourage the creation of a prospective registry in Europe, collecting detailed data in various European countries, in order to assess the adjusted increase in BC risk associated with HRT, which may be population and regimen dependent.