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There is some good news to report in the battle against breast cancer. Breast cancer is the most common major cancer that affects women in North America and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide. There are well over 1 million new cases reported every year, with over 210,000 in the U.S. alone. AFter many years of significant increases in breast cancer tumors having been reported, there may be some new hope.

An announcment at a recent Breast Cancer Symposium has reported that there may be a link between hormone use and breast cancer. Although they stopped short of declaring a definative link between the two, there was startling evidence that there is a connection.

During 2003, many women stopped taking menopauise hormones when a study showed that the hormones were raising the risk of cancer tumors. Since then, many women who had discovered tumors while undertaking hormone therapy prior, and then stopped, were found to be free of tumers. So, while the evidence is not compolete, there is great optimism that the link may have been found.

The reason there can not be a definite connection announced is that since tumors in the breast take so long to develop, going off the hormones would not necessarily prenvent new tumors. But for many women, those tumors that had been there before disontinuing the therapy noticed that the tumors had either disappeared, shrunk, or at least stopped growing.

The tumors were most evident among women aged 50 or over and particularly for tumors whose growth is fueled by estrogen. It is in this age group that the majority of hormone useage occourred.

Another bit of interesting data is that this drop in tumors was noticed by numerous registries that report cases to the federal government. Therefore, there is virtually no chance that the data is the result of some kind of fluke or error. Obviously, research is continuing to be sure that these results were not the result of some other factors. Plus, there is no evidence either way whether these tumors will continue to shrink and regress or just take longer to show up.

While this news is good and hopeful it is not definative. Other factors such as overall health, diet, smoking, and weight can still affect your chances of developing cancer. You show be aware of all of these things. But, for now, let's rejoice in this good news.