Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women. Each year 44 335 women living in the UK are diagnosed with breast cancer. Female sex hormones, such as oestrogen, are clearly implicated in breast cancer and conventional treatments include manipulation of the hormonal environment. There is both epidemiological and experimental evidence that plant oestrogens (phyto-oestrogens) in the diet ma...

Phyto-oestrogens are believed to have a range of beneficial effects on predominant Western diseases. A few studies on phyto-oestrogens in milk exist and show that the composition can be affected by feeding. Therefore, the aim was to study how feeding of lucerne and grass/clover silages (GCSs) affects the concentration of phyto-oestrogens in bovine milk. Sixteen Danish Holstein cows were assigne...

The skin is affected by a range of steroid hormones, including corticosteroids, oestrogens and androgens. Adrenocortical hormones have achieved prominence because of their effective use in dermatology. Their success as healing agents in a variety of conditions is only matched by our ignorance of how they work at the tissue level. In general it seems true that whatever can be measured, be it cap...

OBJECTIVE To determine the relative risk of developing endometrial neoplasia after treatment with oestrogens alone or in conjunction with progestogens. DESIGN Prospective cohort follow up study, average observation period 5.7 years for each patient. To have a 90% chance of detecting a relative risk of 2.0 with 95% significance the study required 78,000 person years of observation. SETTING C...

The precise role of oestrogen in mammals is poorly understood. Actually, the importance of oestrogen for the normal postnatal female physiology is well known, but uncertainty regarding the mechanisms and sites of action in health and disease within a variety of target tissues both in males and females does exist. Oestrogens exert a wide range of biological effects on a large variety of cell typ...