An INTERVIEW with Professor Valerie Beral
ESI Special Topics,
September 2005
Citing URL - http://www.esi-topics.com/breast-cancer2005/interviews/ValerieBeral.html
 n the
interview below, Professor Valerie Beral talks about her
research on breast cancer, specifically her involvement with
the Million Women Study. The paper, "Breast cancer and
hormone replacement therapy in the Million Women Study,"
(Million Women Study Collaborators, Lancet 362[9382]:
419-27, 9 August 2003), is ranked at #1 on our Special Topics
list of papers published in the past two years on breast
cancer. At the time of our analysis, the paper had 194
citations; it now has 327 cites. According to the ISI
Essential
Science Indicators
Web product, Professor Beral’s record includes 70 papers
cited a total of 2,295 times to date in the field of Clinical
Medicine. Professor Beral is the Director of the Epidemiology
Unit at Cancer Research UK in Oxford.
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 Why,
in your view, is your paper highly cited?
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“The Million Women Study was set up specifically to look at the role of different patterns of use of hormone replacement therapy in breast cancer”
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Use of hormone replacement therapy increased rapidly in most
western countries during the 1990s. Breast cancer is, by far, the
most serious adverse effect associated with the use of hormone
replacement therapy. The Million Women Study was set up specifically
to look at the role of different patterns of use of hormone
replacement therapy in breast cancer. Because of the large size of
the study (over one million women, among whom almost 10,000
developed breast cancer after joining the study) it was possible to
arrive at reliable estimates of risk.
Can
you describe the significance of your work for the field of breast
cancer research?
Our main finding was that the hormonal therapies containing both
estrogen and progestagen increased the risk of breast cancer far
more than the therapies containing estrogen only. These findings
have immediate implications for prescribing hormone replacement
therapy.
What
were the circumstances that led you to do this research?
As mentioned above, use of hormone replacement therapy had
increased rapidly in most western countries during the 1990s. At
that time, almost all the information about the effects of hormone
replacement therapy on breast cancer related to preparations
containing estrogen-only, yet in Europe estrogen-progestagen
combinations were used more often. We worked out that we needed to
study at least one million women, to ensure that our findings would
be statistically reliable. This was quite a daunting requirement,
but we were fortunate to be able to collaborate with the National
Health Service Breast Screening Programme. The Programme writes to
every woman in the UK aged 50-64 years once every three years, to
invite them for screening, and it screens over one million women
annually. Working together, we were able to set up what is now the
largest cohort study of women's health in the world. Further details
can be found on the study's website at www.millionwomenstudy.org.
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Professor Valerie Beral
Cancer Research UK
Oxford, UK
Read a classic
Science Watch® interview with Dr.
Valerie
Beral.
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ESI Special Topics,
September 2005
Citing URL - http://www.esi-topics.com/breast-cancer2005/interviews/ValerieBeral.html
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