Posted on 07/10/2002 4:13:13 AM PDT by krodriguesdc
Hormones Raises Heart Disease, Cancer Risk - Study
Tue Jul 9, 6:00 PM ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Women wondering whether to take hormone replacement therapy got a clear answer on Tuesday: Don't, if the goal is to lower the risk of heart disease and other chronic illness.
Healthy women who take combined hormone replacement therapy after menopause increase their risk of breast cancer ( news - web sites), stroke, blood clots and heart disease, researchers said.
The risks are so high the federal government stopped a trial of women taking hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, and issued a warning to doctors and patients.
"Women should not start or continue to use the therapy to prevent heart disease," Dr. Jacques Rossouw of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, who helped lead the study, told a news conference.
"The findings show that it doesn't work. In fact, the therapy increases the chance of a heart attack or stroke, Additionally, it increases the risk of cancer and blood clots," he said.
The study, published in a special online edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association ( news - web sites), is the second blow this month to HRT, which is taken by more 13.5 million American women. Doctors issued a final report last week confirming the combination of estrogen and progestin does not protect women from heart disease after menopause.
The study of 16,600 women nationwide found that HRT does lower the risk of osteoporosis and of colon cancer, but it raised the number of strokes by 41 percent, heart attacks by 29 percent and breast cancer cases by 26 percent.
WOMEN MAY BE FRIGHTENED
"These data are bound to sound frightening to some women," Rossouw said. But he said the risks built up over a population and were not especially high for an individual woman.
"The increased risk of breast cancer for each woman in the ... study who was taking estrogen plus progestin therapy, for instance, was actually very small. It was less than a tenth of a percent per year," he said.
For every 10,000 women who take the hormones for a year, seven extra have coronary heart disease "events" such as a heart attack, eight more develop breast cancer and eight more suffer a stroke, as compared to women not taking hormones.
Rossouw said it may be safe to take combined HRT for a short period. "But it is very hard to pin down what is a safe period," he added.
Wyeth, which makes the Prempro brand of combined HRT used in the study, said most women take it for less than the five years the study lasted.
"The average duration of therapy for woman taking Prempro is 33 months," Dr. Victoria Kusiak, vice president of clinical affairs for the company, said on a telephone interview. "Fifteen percent stay on for more than four years."
She said a company survey found 16 percent of women are being prescribed HRT to prevent heart disease, and 90 percent get their first prescription for hormones to manage immediate symptoms such as hot flashes and vaginal dryness.
The researchers said women must decide for themselves how serious their immediate symptoms are, and whether the benefits of the hormones outweigh the risks of chronic disease.
Wyeth said about 8.5 million women take its hormone products each month -- 5 million take estrogen-only Premarin, and 2.7 million take Prempro.
The researchers said they had contacted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ( news - web sites) and hoped Wyeth would change the labeling on Prempro to reflect their findings.
Kusiak said the current label was "consistent with" the findings but said the company would review it. "The company will be evaluating the results of this study against the label and making any appropriate changes," she said.
"We hope they will do the right thing," Rossouw said.
Women need to look at alternative treatments to prevent heart disease, osteoporosis and other aging-associated diseases, said Marcia Stefanick, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University in California, who led the study. "We need to clearly separate treatment for diseases of aging in women," she said.
The estrogen-progestin combination was formulated because taking estrogen alone increases the risk of cancer of the uterus. For women who have had hysterectomies and who need HRT, estrogen alone may be safer, the researchers said.
"A separate clinical trial of estrogen alone is continuing," Stefanick said.
Shares of Madison, New Jersey-based Wyeth closed down $11.94 at $37.30 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, a four-year low.
my next question is - why synthetic HRT at all when there are alternative methods that would not give these life threatening side effects?
this study really destroys the notion that modern science and pharmaceuticals can solve everything...
There have been about a zillion studies of hormone therapy done over the years with varying results
I think one impetus to these recent larger studies is the age of baby boomers. Many women are and will be entering the age at which hormones are considered, and a lot more women in that group want to stay "forever young", IMO.
She said she wasn't surprised by the results
Also said if you're doing well on the meds, keep on taking it (which means if you're still alive, keep buying the meds. She contradicted just about everything the folks are saying about "getting off" those meds.
In regard to clots, they asked her about aspirin...she said they didn't know if that really works to stop that problem.
Where did this lady come from, who is she working for and why was she giving so much "Opposite" instruction to present takers of this hormone replacement therapy.
P.S. Hot flashes...it's just annoying flipping the covers on and off all night long or taking a quick trip outside into the snow.
Don't fool with mother nature, folks.
Sac
Sac
There may be some "quality of life" issues. I am not female, so I really don't know what to say about "feeling better" or "looking younger" or some of the other purported benefits.
Nice grammar!
BIGG MONEYYY!!!
but it's not them who are taking this bullsh*t and they are not at risk!
big tobacco will make the law suits on big pharmaceutical look like small change...
once the ball gets rolling on this it'll be a slaughter...
Let's see. Thats 7+8+8=23 per 10,000 per year. So if you are on this stuff long-term, say twenty years, that's an additional 460 per 10,000. Compare that to say, total cancer deaths from asbestos for a twenty year exposure at twenty times the OSHA Permissable Exposure Limit, which will yield an additional 439 cases per 10,000 (Federal Register, June 26, 1986, OSHA). Now if any employer is so irresponsible and criminal to expose his workers to twenty times the OSHA PEL for twenty years, he is going to jail for a very, very long time. What will happen to the doctors who continue to push this stuff on women?
To say that this level of risk is small flies in the face of every other risk reduction effort society undertakes. Of 23 out of 10,000 drivers were killed per year, we would have on the order of 400,000 highway deaths a year. Would that be an acceptable risk? If 23 out of 10,000 smokers were killed per year, we would have on the order of 150,000 smoking related deaths a year. How big would the lawsuit be on that one? We have spent billions of dollars and bankrupted something like 60 Fortune 500 companies over Asbestos, and the risk from these drugs is greater than Asbestos ever was.
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