Since it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I was curious to find out if any studies had been done to see if there were any effects for transmasculine and transfeminine people on HRT and the prevalence of breast cancer. To answer the question I'd been pondering, yes there is. There's a new study from Netherlands examining the prevalence of breast cancer in transgender people.
Gooren et al found that trans women and trans men who have had hormone therapy may be at the same level of risk for breast cancer as cis men.
For trans women, the development of breasts and increase in breast tissue might increase their risk for breast cancer. Trans women also receive estrogen and/or progesterone, which may affect an estrogen or progesterone sensitive cancer.
This study’s authors found 8 cases of breast cancer in trans women in the medical literature, ranging from 1968 to 2013. Three of those cases appeared not to be related to hormones. The other five occurred within 5-10 years of starting hormone therapy. These cases also follow the (cis women) pattern of ductal carcinomas being the most common cancer.
Of course, bear in mind that these stats are for the Netherlands, and the United States has a far larger population of trans peeps.
If that's the case, this initial study is relatively good news, but more research still needs to be done top cross check the results of this one before we can definitely be certain that what they discovered in the Dutch study is true across the trans population in general.
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