Progesterone hormone helps women fight breast cancer better and increases their life expectancy by several years.
Tata Memorial came to this conclusion after a five-year study on 1,000 women undergoing treatment for cancer. Dr RA Badwe, director of Tata Memorial Hospital & Cancer Research Institute, presented the reports of the study at San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in the US on Sunday.
The study is the first of its kind in the world, according to Tata Memorial. If the findings are put to use, it will drastically bring down the treatment cost, Dr Indraneel Mittra of the hospital’s oncology department said. “Compared to the costly treatment available for breast cancer, a hydroxy-progesterone injection costs approximately Rs100,” he said. “This obviously increases its affordability. The best part is there are no side effects.”
Badwe, who is also the head of breast service and surgical oncology at Tata Memorial, in 1991 studied several cases and concluded that progesterone might help in treating breast cancer. He found that women undergoing surgeries for breast cancer during the luteal phase of their menstrual cycle (when the presence of progesterone is higher) had higher survival rates. Also, chances of a recurrence of tumour lessened considerably. “We used this hypothesis and carried out a full-fledged study by selecting 1,000 women who had breast cancer,” Mittra said.
Of the 1,000 women, 500 were given hydroxy-progesterone injection 10 days before surgery, and the rest were operated upon without being given the injection. “At least 4% of the women whose disease was in the initial stage had reduction in recurrence of the tumour. Of those whose disease was in the advanced stage, 10 % showed a reduction in recurrence of the tumour and 8% showed reduction in mortality,” Mittra said. “Of the women who were at high risk, there was a 30% reduction in mortality. These women, who would have certainly died, survived.”
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