Does the drug combo for metastatic breast cancer make a women more manly?

Answer 1

Not generally, though it can likely impact hormonal balance, which can potentially cause a woman to seem "less womanly", for sure. Women's bodies do create a small amount of testosterone but, without the introduction of an outside catalyst for testosterone (i.e. anabolic steroids, etc.), there is no obvious reason that only this level would increase when levels of estrogen and progesterone (the "feminizing" hormones) might decrease.

While increases in testosterone CAN, under certain circumstances, initiate a decrease in estrogen and progesterone production, a decrease in the "feminizing" hormones do not initiate an automatic increase of testosterone in women. There is also no real medical correlation for most cancer-treating agents to directly cause a woman to have an increase testosterone alone (increases in feminizing hormones in the blood, by their very nature, will inhibit the utilization of testosterone in women).