If you are menopausal, stop taking hormones.
Sharp drop in breast cancer victims tied to reduced hormone use.
"At first I didn't believe it — it was so astounding," said Donald Berry of the University of Texas, who led the analysis published in The New England Journal of Medicine. "But it really looks like it's a story that holds together."
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"An awful lot of breast cancer was caused by doctors' prescriptions," said Larry Norton of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Researchers said the findings should encourage more women to discontinue hormone use or take them at the lowest dose for the shortest time necessary.
"These data add to the message that we really should be discouraging women from initiating menopausal hormones," said Marcia Stefanick of Stanford University. "We need to stop underplaying those risks. They are very real."