Study: Breast Cancer Not Inevitable From Radiation for Hodgkin's

While radiation significantly increases the risk that female survivors of Hodgkin’s disease will subsequently be diagnosed with breast cancer, a new study suggests that adding cheomtherapy to radiation may reduce the risk -- possibly by inducing premature menopause.

Dutch researchers examined radiation dose, chemotherapy, and reproductive factors in women diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease before age 41, and compared these factors in 48 women who had developed breast cancer 5 or more years after their Hodgkin's disease diagnosis and 175 women who did not develop breast cancer.

Among patients treated with radiation alone, the risk of breast cancer increased with increasing radiation dose. But patients treated with both chemotherapy and radiation had a 61 percent lower risk of breast cancer than patients treated with radiation therapy alone, the researchers reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The researchers suggested that the decrease in risk of breast cancer in patients also treated with chemotherapy may be linked to chemotherapy-induced premature menopause. They found that 69 percent of patients treated with chemotherapy plus radiation reached menopause before the age of 41.

Reaching menopause before age 36 was associated with a 94 percent reduction in the risk of breast cancer compared to women who reached menopause after age 45, the researchers added.

But in an accompanying editorial, Dr. Dan L. Longo of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore cautioned that the results were based on older chemotherapy regimens and that newer forms of chemotherapy -- which have virtually no effect on the onset of menopause -- may not be associated with a decrease in breast cancer risk.

Other Sources: Journal of the National Cancer Institute