Blood hormone levels 'can predict long-term breast cancer risk for postmenopausal women'

A new study conducted in the US has found that blood hormone levels predict long-term breast cancer risk for postmenopausal women.

Dr Xuehong Zhang, an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, stated the study uncovered a single hormone level that is associated with breast cancer risk for at least 16 to 20 years among postmenopausal women not using postmenopausal hormones.

"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," he said.

Dr Zhang added that the current data uncovered in the research shows that hormone levels would not need to be measured in the clinic more than once every 10 years or even longer.

Investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center studying breast cancer recently found the lysyl oxidase gene is spurred to production in cancer cells as a result of their contact with mesenchymal stem cells.

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