HORMONE TREATMENT

Some ovarian cancers require the female hormone oestrogen to grow. Hormone therapy uses drugs to block the production of oestrogen or to prevent oestrogen from getting to the cancer cells.

Hormone therapy is commonly used to treat breast cancer and Tamoxifen (one of the drugs used for this) can also be used to treat certain ovarian cancer types. Granulosa cell tumours and certain types of recurrent, slow growing epithelial ovarian cancer may be treated with Tamoxifen. 

Hormone therapy is not standard ovarian cancer treatment and no large scale trials have yet been carried out to see who would benefit most from this kind of treatment.