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Hormone replacement therapy after menopause and risk of breast cancer in BRCA1 mutation carriers: a case–control study

  • Epidemiology
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Abstract

Many BRCA1 mutation carriers undergo elective surgical oophorectomy (often before menopause) to manage their elevated risk of developing ovarian cancer. It is important to clarify whether or not the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to mitigate the symptoms associated with surgical or natural menopause is safe in women with an inherited BRCA1 mutation and no personal history of breast or ovarian cancer. We conducted a case–control analysis of 432 matched pairs of women with a BRCA1 mutation. Detailed information on HRT use after menopause (duration, type, age at first/last use, formulation) was obtained from a research questionnaire administered at the time of study enrollment. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate the odds ratio (OR) and 95 % confidence intervals (CI) associated with HRT use. The mean duration of HRT use after menopause was 4.3 years among the cases and 4.4 years among the controls (P = 0.83). The adjusted OR for breast cancer comparing all women who ever used HRT to those who never used HRT was 0.80 (95 % CI 0.55–1.16; P = 0.24). Findings did not differ by type of menopause (natural vs. surgical), by recency of use, by duration of use, and by formulation type. These findings suggest that a short course of HRT should not be contra-indicated for BRCA1 mutation carriers who have undergone menopause and who have no personal history of cancer.

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Acknowledgments

We would also like to thank the study coordinators Marcia Llacuachaqui, Farah Shoukat, and Alejandra Ragone, as well as the students and staff Ellen MacDougall, Zoella Pasta, Nida Mian, Jennifer Ng, Sarah Chin, Hamida Begum, Harmeet Chaudhary, and Yaminee Charavanapavan who helped with the data collection and data entry. Joanne Kotsopoulos is the recipient of a Cancer Care Ontario Research Chair in Population Studies and a Canadian Cancer Society Career Development Award in Prevention. Charis Eng is the recipient of the Sondra J. and Stephen R. Hardis Chair of Cancer Genomic Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic and of the ACS Clinical Research Professorship. Susan L. Neuhausen was partially supported by the Morris and Horowitz Endowed Professorship, and her work was supported by a grant from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health (R01CA74415). Steven A. Narod is the recipient of a Tier I Canada Research Chair. This study was supported by a Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute grant (703058). Patients were recruited for study from the City of Hope Clinical Cancer Genomics Community Research Network, supported in part by Award Number RC4CA153828 (PI: J. Weitzel) from the National Cancer Institute and the Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health. Siranoush Manoukian is affiliated with the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori (INT), Milan, Italy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Women’s College Research Institute, Women’s College Hospital, 76 Grenville Street, 6th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5S 1B2, Canada

    Joanne Kotsopoulos, Ping Sun & Steven A. Narod

  2. Department of Genetics and Pathology, International Hereditary Cancer Center, Pomeranian Medical University, Szczecin, Poland

    Tomasz Huzarski, Jacek Gronwald & Jan Lubinski

  3. Inherited Cancer Research Group, Department for Medical Genetics, The Norwegian Radium Hospital, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway

    Pal Moller

  4. Department of Tumor Biology, Institute of Cancer Research, The Norwegian Radium Hospital, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway

    Pal Moller

  5. Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Creighton University School of Medicine, Omaha, NE, USA

    Henry T. Lynch

  6. Department of Population Sciences, Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, Duarte, CA, USA

    Susan L. Neuhausen

  7. Division of Human Genetics, The Ohio State University Medical Center, Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, OH, USA

    Leigha Senter

  8. Division of Gynecologic Oncology, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, Toronto, Canada

    Rochelle Demsky

  9. Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Rochelle Demsky

  10. Program in Cancer Genetics, Department of Oncology and Human Genetics, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada

    William D. Foulkes

  11. Genomic Medicine Institute and Center for Personalized Genetic Healthcare, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Charis Eng

  12. Gynecology Oncology, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Beth Karlan

  13. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA

    Nadine Tung

  14. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Comprehensive Cancer Center, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Christian F. Singer

Authors
  1. Joanne Kotsopoulos
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  2. Tomasz Huzarski
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  3. Jacek Gronwald
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  4. Pal Moller
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  5. Henry T. Lynch
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  6. Susan L. Neuhausen
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  7. Leigha Senter
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  8. Rochelle Demsky
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  9. William D. Foulkes
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  10. Charis Eng
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  11. Beth Karlan
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  12. Nadine Tung
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  13. Christian F. Singer
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  14. Ping Sun
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  15. Jan Lubinski
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  16. Steven A. Narod
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Steven A. Narod.

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Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

The members of the Hereditary Breast Cancer Clinical Study Group are given in Appendix.

Appendix

Appendix

Carrie Snyder, Aletta Poll, Sonia Nanda, Andrea Eisen, Ellen Warner, Wendy Meschino, Barry Rosen, Susan Armel, Peter Ainsworth, Karen Panabaker, Gillian Mitchell, Melanie Taylor, Jeffrey N. Weitzel, Fergus Couch, Siranoush Manoukian, Christine Rappaport, Barbara Pasini, Mary B. Daly, Olufunmilayo Olopade, Linda Steele, Howard Saal, Taya Fallen, Marie Wood, Wendy McKinnon, Dawna Gilchrist, Edmond Lemire, Albert E. Chudley, Kim Serfas, Kevin Sweet, Louise Bordeleau, Christine Elser, Seema Panchal, Dana Zakalik, Tuya Pal, Susan T. Vadaparamdil, Ophira Ginsburg, Stephanie Hurst, Carey A. Cullinane, Robert E. Reilly, Joanne L. Blum, Theodora Ross, Caitlin Mauer, Ava Kwong, Cezary Cybulski, Jeanna McCuaig, Judy Garber, Charmaine Kim-Sing, Sofia Merajver, Eitan Friedman, Daniel Rayson, David Euhus, Claudine Isaacs, Kelly Metcalfe, Timothy Rebbeck, Gareth Evans and Anna Jakubowska.

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Kotsopoulos, J., Huzarski, T., Gronwald, J. et al. Hormone replacement therapy after menopause and risk of breast cancer in BRCA1 mutation carriers: a case–control study. Breast Cancer Res Treat 155, 365–373 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-016-3685-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-016-3685-3

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