Women kick the PremPro habit and live to tell the tale.
In November 2006, research was released by cancer centers around the U.S. showing that breast cancer rates have dropped dramatically since 2002. Most doctors and researchers agree that the drop was created when millions of women suddenly stopped using hormone replacement therapy (HRT) after the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study group announced, in the summer of 2002, that HRT users had an increased risk of breast cancer, stroke and heart disease. Estimates are that as many as 50 percent of women using HRT stopped taking it within six months after the WHI results came out.
How large was the drop in breast cancer? It depends on who's reporting the statistics and how they're interpreting the numbers. Most of the data came from the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) cancer registry.