Estrogen and bc

[AlaskaAngel]

It puzzles me that estrogen is considered to feed cancer, and yet the majority of women dx'd with bc are over 50 (when women theoretically have less estrogen due to menopause), while far fewer women under 50 are diagnosed with bc.

I don't think it is because there simply are more women over 50 who are living than who are under 50, because there should be numerically far fewer women that are older than 50 since less would have survived that long than in the younger population under 50?

I know it supposedly takes years for bc to develop, which would contribute some to the aging of those diagnosed, and also that the more years that one has high levels of estrogen the more likely one is to have cancer. But if that is true then why are some very young women being diagnosed with cancer when they haven't had many years of producing estrogen?

I bet that if these young women with bc were tested to determine their hormonal levels/composition science might find something different about hormonal balance that correlates with the reason some older women are more prone to develop bc.

A.A.

[lauren]

Hi Lois...i kept meaning to write you back on our email thing, but i kept getting sidetracked...mainly here!! anyway, i thought i would tell you a bit of what i know, what i have heard:

most YOUNG women are diagnosed with NON-estrogen receptor positive cancer. I happen to be 38 and was er/pr positive, but I am in the minority. Most post-menopausal breast cancers ARE er/pr positive. Why that is? Who knows. It is what it is. In young women whose cancers are hormone negative, hormones do NOT feed the tumors (I know, you already know that).

It is possible that years of hormonal activity prime the body for a hormone positive cancer that appears in later years. Or it is possible that young women get a more aggressive form of breast cancer, period, and the more aggressive form of breast cancer tends to NOT be er/pr positive. It is hard to say why.

It is easier to simply state the fact and them find relationships between the facts. Know what I mean?