Adjuvant hormonal therapy for breast cancer and risk of hormone receptor-specific subtypes of contralateral breast cancer

Abstract

Compared with the breast cancer risk women in the general population have, breast cancer survivors have a substantially higher risk of developing a second primary contralateral breast cancer. Adjuvant hormonal therapy reduces this risk, but preliminary data indicate that it may also increase risk of hormone receptor-negative contralateral tumors. We conducted a population-based nested case-control study including 367 women diagnosed with both first primary estrogen receptor (ER)-positive invasive breast cancer and second primary contralateral breast cancer and 728 matched control women diagnosed only with a first breast cancer. Data on adjuvant hormonal therapy, other treatments, and breast cancer risk factors were ascertained through telephone interviews and medical record abstractions. Two-sided statistical tests using conditional logistic regression were conducted to quantify associations between adjuvant hormonal therapy and risk of hormone receptor-specific subtypes of contralateral breast cancer (n = 303 ER+ and n = 52 ER-cases). Compared with women not treated with hormonal therapy, users of adjuvant tamoxifen for ≥5 years had a reduced risk of ER+ contralateral breast cancer [odds ratio, 0.4; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.3-0.7], but a 4.4-fold (95% CI, 1.03-19.0) increased risk of ER+ contralateral breast cancer. Tamoxifen use for <5 years was not associated with ER- contralateral breast cancer risk. Although adjuvant hormonal therapy has clear benefits, risk of the relatively uncommon outcome of ER- contralateral breast cancer may now need to be tallied among its risks. This is of clinical concern given the poorer prognosis of ER- compared with ER+ tumors. ©2009 American Association for Cancer Research.