29 Apr 1997: Journal Explores Hormones, Environment and Breast Cancer
The influence of hormones, hormone metabolism and environmental hormones on breast cancer is the subject of the April Environmental Health Perspectives Supplements (Volume 105, Supplement 3) of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Although it begins with a note that knowledge of a relationship between hormones and breast cancer is more than 200 years old, the issue contains the most current research, in papers updated from a workshop at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane/Xavier University in New Orleans. The volume was edited by Devra Lee Davis, Ph.D., a scientist with the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C.
Any member of the media can obtain a copy of this comprehensive survey of current breast cancer research by calling Tom Hawkins, at (919) 541-1402, or Bill Grigg at (919) 541-3345.
In a co-authored introduction to the issue, Dr. Davis and Susan M. Sieber, Ph.D., of the National Cancer Institute, write:
"For more than 200 years, scientists have appreciated that breast cancer cannot arise without hormonal influences. In the 18th Century, the pioneering researcher on environmental medicine, Barnardo Ramazzini, observed that nuns had higher ratesof breast cancer and speculated that this might be tied to the fact that they did not have children."
Today hormonal influences that are of concern in breast cancer include exposures to endocrine-disrupting environmental chemicals.
The journal supplement compiles 22 presentations under four section headings: Hormonal Metabolites as Biologic Markers and Breast Cancer Risk; Human Studies on Hormonal Metabolism and Breast Cancer; Effects of Environmental Exposures on Estrogenic Activity; and Establishing the Risks from Xenohormones.
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