Hormone Therapy

Inside our body is a network of glands that make different types of substances called hormones. One of their jobs is to send messages to cells that affect how cells behave and grow.

Sometimes hormones tell cells to divide and grow when they shouldn’t and in that way they can help certain cancers to develop and grow. We call these types of cancers hormone sensitive or hormone dependent. Therefore it may sound strange that we can use hormones to treat cancer as well. The clever thing is that if a person has a cancer that uses one type of hormone to grow, then we can give them another type of hormone that works against that hormone. So by giving hormone treatment to these types of cancers, the hormone in the treatment can either stop the damaging hormones being made or it can interfere with the message from the damaging hormones so that they don’t tell cancer cells to keep dividing and growing. Common cancers that can be hormone sensitive are for example breast cancer and prostate cancer. Hormone therapy can only be used if the cancer is hormone sensitive or hormone dependent.

To help you find out more, we have linked to Maggie’s CancerLinks where you will be signposted to high quality information about different types of treatment, including hormone treatment.

Please get in touch with us if you have any worries or questions related to cancer.

Page updated 17 July 2017