<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[A Blog Around The Clock]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[http://blog.coturnix.org]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[Bora Zivkovic]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://blog.coturnix.org/author/coturnix/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[RU-486 prevents breast cancer in&nbsp;mice]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1565568,00.html" target="_blank" title="">The Abortion Pill Could Prevent Cancer</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>In women with BRCA-1, the naturally occurring female hormone progesterone speeds the proliferation of mammary cells. &#8220;If we block the progesterone pathway using an antiprogesterone, it could prevent breast cancer,&#8221; says Eva Lee, lead author of the study. That&#8217;s exactly what mifepristone did for the experiment&#8217;s mice, all of which had the BRCA-1 gene. At age 1, none of those treated with mifepristone had developed tumors. But all the untreated mice had tumors by the time they were 8 months old.</p></blockquote>
<p>From what I have heard on NPR, all 14 of the treated mice remained cancer-free, while all 27 mice who received either placebo or nothing, developed breast cancer.  Of course, such clear-cut, all-or-none data are both exciting and suspicious and I am sure someone will try to replicate this very soon.<br />
I do not know exact details of the protocol, but it appears that the mice were given RU-486 throughout life.  This is, of course, impossible in humans &#8211; you cannot give this to girls/women from birth till death every day!  We are looking primarily for treatment, not prevention (certainly not a pharmaceutical for prevention &#8211; behavioral methods will be welcome if discovered).<br />
Still, knowing that breast cancer cells have progesterone receptors, that progesterone promotes breast cancer and that RU-486 prevents it will place a sharp focus of future research on this mechanism, discovering its details and potentially developing a new drug that can be used in the treatment of breast cancer.</p>
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