Is anyone tired of all these media reports on  new studies of old WHI data that trigger alarmist headlines such as “HRT Does More Harm Than Good“.    

That headline would more realistically read “Premarin does more harm than good”.  But if it did then it would not even get published.  Why? Because that is old news. 

We now know that Premarin, particularly in doses used in the WHI study, is not an appropriate approach to HRT these days.  Even Wyeth, its makers,  agree with that.

We know that Premarin is made with pregnant mare urine and therefore is not bio-identical to human Estrogen and so any interpretation of the study results needs to factor that in when trying to generalize the findings to any or all bio-identical Estrogen. 

We also know that using any form of Estrogen replacement without balancing it with Progesterone is not an appropriate either.  

And with a lot of research now indicating that Progesterone, rather than Estrogen, replacement might be the appropriate first step in any hormone balancing therapy, why the continued focus on Premarin? 

So why not report that?   Too informative?

Let’s replace the specific with the general to sell more news.   “HRT does more harm than good”.  Why is Oprah’s approach “scary” and this not?

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Hot Flash!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.