A study conducted by the Women’s Health Initiative in the United States found that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) does not increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer, according to a foreign media report on January 1. Once the findings were published, people became more and more confused about the safety of this therapy. After analyzing the health records of millions of British women in their 50s and 60s, U.S. researchers did not find a link between the controversial treatment and the risk of breast cancer. Concerns about the safety of HRT drugs first intensified in 2002. At the time, a large study conducted in the United States found a link between HRT drugs and a range of diseases, including breast cancer and heart disease. Hundreds of thousands of British women abandoned the treatment due to fears. HRT therapy is usually a “double-barreled” combination of estrogen and progesterone. Concerns about the treatment have not gone away, and many women are still fearful of receiving HRT. Just a year ago, fears of a link between HRT therapy and breast cancer resurfaced when a study concluded that “taking HRT drugs doubles the risk of breast cancer. The study noted that taking HRT therapy for as little as two years can increase the risk of breast cancer. However, if the therapy is stopped, the risk to women decreases rapidly, returning to normal levels after two years. In an attempt to dispel this controversy, researchers at the University of Bristol analyzed whether the odds of different diseases change over time while women are treated with HRT drugs. If HRT therapy did raise the risk of breast cancer, then the number of breast cancer cases should have trended downward after 2002 as more people gave up the therapy. However, the scientists found that a decrease in the number of people receiving HRT therapy did not affect breast cancer rates, suggesting that the therapy was not associated with the development of breast cancer. The study, published in the Journal of Public Health, reported that there was also no link between HRT therapy and bowel cancer or hip fractures. HRT therapy is used to treat menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, mood swings and night sweats. The therapy can be administered in a variety of ways, such as pills, injections, topical skin applications and creams, and its long-term effects may include a reduced risk of osteoporosis.