U.S. Breast Cancer Rates No Longer Declining March 1, 2011 -- The decline in U.S. breast cancer rates seen in 2002 and 2003 in white women has not continued, according to a new report that tracks the numbers from 2003 through 2007.

''There was a dramatic decline between 2002 and 2003," says researcher Carol DeSantis, MPH, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society and a co-author of the report, conducted with researchers from the National Cancer Institute.

This decline, seen only in white women, was about 7%, she says, and widely attributed to women discontinuing menopausal hormone therapy after results of the large-scale Women's Health Initiative study, released in 2002, found an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and breast cancer with the use of estrogen-progesterone therapy.

"It appears that the decline from [discontinuing] the use of hormone therapy has stabilized," DeSantis tells WebMD.

Two experts not involved in the study say the findings are not surprising, as they, too, speculate that the effect of discontinuing hormone use by now has stabilized.

The study is published online in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

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