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While you can’t change some breast cancer risk factors – family history and aging, for example – there are others that you can control. Here are 5 ways to help protect your breast health: Watch your weight as being overweight or obese increases breast cancer risk. This is especially true after....
You cannot be sure if you have breast cancer just by detecting a lump in the breast. A biopsy is necessary to identify if a lump is cancerous or not. For this, you have to visit a specialist who will examine your breasts and ask for some diagnostic tests.Though, at home, to identify any lumps, you c....
Vitamin B17 is not actually a vitamin. Vitamins are essential for human health. B17 is a poison also known as amygdalin as well as drugs. Amygdalin is broken down into cyanide, which is an incredibly toxic substance. There is zero reason to use it to treat cancer. There is no scientific evidence is ....
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Receptors are proteins in or on cells that can attach to certain substances in the blood. Normal breast cells and some breast cancer cells have receptors that attach to the hormones estrogen and progesterone, and depend on these hormones to grow.
The breast tissue estrogen receptor is both genetic and variable in the presence of chemotherapy and other medications.
Breast cancer cells may have one, both, or none of these receptors.
ER-positive: Breast cancers that have estrogen receptors are called ER-positive (or ER+) cancers.
PR-positive: Breast cancers with progesterone receptors are called PR-positive (or PR+) cancers.
Keeping these receptors from attaching to the hormones can help keep the cancer from growing and spreading. There are drugs that can be used to do this.
Knowing the hormone receptor status of your cancer helps doctors decide how to treat it. If your cancer has one or both of these hormone receptors, hormone therapy drugs can be used to either lower estrogen levels or stop estrogen from acting on breast cancer cells. This kind of treatment is helpful for hormone receptor-positive breast cancers, but it doesn’t work on tumors that are hormone receptor-negative (both ER- and PR-negative).