Breast cancer chemotherapy and its effect on ovaries

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It is good that Breast cancer chemotherapy can cause menstruation to cease. Women can live longer if their periods stop.

In the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, 500 premenopausal women who were taking chemotherapy drugs for breast cancer were studied. About half of them stopped having their monthly periods because of the cancer killing medications. They had tumors with hormone receptor positive cells. Hormones cause such breast cancers become more severe. Women who their period is stopped have more chance to cure and the probability of death is about 10% less.

Chemotherapy helps both the cancer cells stop growing and also stops ovaries to secret hormones. This also helps the patient to defeat the cancer easier because as it is said before, hormones helps the cancer cell to grow faster. Estrogen which is secreted by ovaries, causes the tumors that are hormone receptor positive to spread faster.

So can suppressing the ovaries in the menstruating women who have breast cancer be a good help? This is what that still needs to be investigated more. Som drugs like Zoladex and Synarel, can decrease the estrogen production to the after menopause level. Women who like their menstruation to stop can talk to their doctors about taking such drugs - of course if they don’t want to get pregnant in future.