Blood hormone test can help predict long-term breast cancer risk
Washington: Elevated blood hormone levels can predict a woman’s risk for developing postmenopausal breast cancer for up to 20 years, according to a study.
The finding of the study, led by Xuehong Zhang, MD, Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) Department of Medicine, suggests that a blood hormone test can determine women at risk of breast cancer.
Using data from the Nurses’ Health Study, Zhang , Susan Hankinson, ScD, Channing Division of Network Medicine, BWH Department of Medicine and colleagues analysed 796 patients with postmenopausal breast cancer who had not received hormone therapy.
They conducted blood hormone tests at two time points: between 1989 and 1990 and between 2000 and 2002. Researchers matched each patient with two controls who were not diagnosed with breast cancer.
“We found that a single hormone level was associated with breast cancer risk for at least 16 to 20 years among postmenopausal women not using postmenopausal hormones,” said Zhang.
“We, and others, are now evaluating if the addition of hormone levels to current risk prediction models can substantially improve our ability to identify high-risk women who would benefit from enhanced screening or chemoprevention—if so, the current data suggest that hormone levels would not need to be measured in the clinic more than once every 10, or possibly 20, years,” the researcher stated.
Women with hormone levels in the highest 25 percent for estradiol, testosterone and DHEAS had a 50 percent to 107 percent greater chance for developing breast cancer compared with women in the lowest 25 percent. Relative risks for developing breast cancer were similar at one to 10 years vs. 11 to 20 years (also 16 to 20 years) after blood collection.
Researchers also investigated whether these higher levels were more closely linked to hormone-receptor positive breast cancers and if they predicted risk regardless of tumour aggressiveness.
In the first case, they found that elevated levels of estradiol increase a woman’s risk for hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, specifically estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) and progesterone receptor-positive (PR+) tumours.
In general, increased hormone levels, except for DHEAS, tracked closely with increased risk for receptor-positive breast cancer. Data on receptor-negative cancers were inconclusive and need additional, large studies.
Significantly, elevated hormone levels were also associated with aggressive breast cancer, which the study defined as recurrent or fatal cancer.
“The relationship was comparable or possibly stronger for recurrent and fatal breast cancer than it was for overall breast cancer risk although these results were based on relative small numbers of participants,” said Zhang.
The findings will be presented at the 11th Annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research.
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