Progestinic treatment of mastodynia. New suggestion for the follow-up.

The problem of progestin treatment for benign breast disease and mastodynia is still dividing Clinicians and Searchers: the traditional methods of clinical investigation and follow-up do not allow any further step in the debate. In this work we evaluated the role of E2/Progesterone R.I.A. and thermography in monitoring the effect of progestin on BBD and found that only the latter can give useful informations, insufficient, however, to direct the treatment. If we want to be able to select the patients suitable to be treated by progesterone, we must know the tissutal hormone receptivity and be able to reexamine it during the treatment to verify the effectiveness of the administered drug. These informations can be obtained through the assay of Estradiol and Progesterone Receptors in the most accessible hormone-dependent tissue: the endometrium. Our data point out a quite different behaviour of Estradiol and Progesterone cytoplasmic Receptors in the endometrium of women with mastodynia and controls. The knowledge of these informations in the single patient will let us come out from subjectivity when deciding about BBD therapy or when trying to correct unsatisfactory treatments.