article_snippet.sent: A new study has shown women still have an increased risk of breast cancer years after stopping taking hormone replacement therapy .
article_snippet.sent: Hormone replacement therapy increases a woman's risk of breast cancer up to eight years after a woman has stopped treatment, scientists have warned.
article_snippet.sent: The Women's Health Initiative in the US and the Million Women Study in the UK have both revealed strong evidence that HRT increases a woman's risk of breast, womb and ovarian cancers.
article_snippet.sent: The Million Women Study, a collaboration between Cancer Research UK and the NHS, results suggested that women who are using combined HRT have double the risk of breast cancer compared to non-users.
article_snippet.sent: Now scientists involved in The Women's Health Initiative study have warned, after further follow-ups, that women who take the combined oestrogen and progesterone HRT therapy continue to have a high risk of breast cancer, up to eight years after women who take the combined oestrogen and progesterone HRT therapy stop treatment.
article_snippet.sent: Both concluded that women prescribed HRT were at a higher risk of breast cancer, than those not receiving the treatment.
article_snippet.sent: Those women who took the combined HRT, which boosts the body's levels of both female sex hormones oestrogen and progesterone, have an increased risk of breast cancer up to eight years after treatment .
article_snippet.sent: After the reported increased risk in breast cancer for women taking combined HRT, use of the therapy dropped dramatically.
article_snippet.sent: The new study, led by Dr Rowan Chlebowski, an oncologist at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, and one of the initial investigators on WHI, focused on a woman's risk of breast cancer after stopping HRT treatment.
article_snippet.sent: In the first two years, after stopping HRT treatment, researchers noted a sharp decrease in breast cancer risk in those women who had taken both oestrogen and progesterone.
article_snippet.sent: Dr Chlebowski said while the results do show a higher than normal risk of breast cancer years after stopping HRT, it is only 'a little more risk than we thought with oestrogen and progesterone'. '