We
did a lot of work on the biochemistry of cysts. Some of these cysts
fluids contain levels of hormones 1,000 times greater than plasma.
There’s all this hormone soup floating around in the breasts
and it’s the same kind of idea. You know what’s happening
in the tumor to their hormones and intratumor aromatase is the same
kind of area of interest. What’s going on in these tumors?
Why do postmenopausal women have the same levels of estrogen in
their tumors as premenopausal women? And yet premenopausal women
have much greater circulating levels. It’s rather odd really.
Dr.
Love: Has that been duplicated anywhere else or been looked at?
Dr.
Dixon: When you look at the previous data almost everybody who has
looked at it has found similar results. And when you look at some
of the analysis that have been done in papers previously many other
papers have found exactly the same. So when you do a meta-analysis
and combine all the results, they are all entirely consistent and
part of the problem is that people confused the term cyst. They
have equated cyst with microscopic cystic disease but what we are
talking about is palpable cystic disease. And when you take out
a series that is being published in palpable cysts, the findings
are remarkably consistent. In fact, there is a table in our Lancet
paper which summarizes all the previous studies and our results
are entirely consistent with what everybody else has found.
