New results of a study undertaken by Copenhagen University have been released.  The study is an observational study of  698,000 women aged 51 to 69  who take part in a national health database.

Back in September 2008, Reuters reported ”women who take hormone replacement therapy to treat menopause symptoms do not have a higher than usual risk of heart attack, especially if they use a cream or skin patch or take “cyclic” hormone combinations“.   In fact what was found was that a cyclic method using estrogen and progesterone  is recommended and topical application is best. To quote the actual doctor,

“… the main message is that when hormone therapy is indicated for a woman, then a cyclic combined regimen should be preferred, and that application via the skin or the vagina is associated with a decreased risk” of heart attack”.

However they are now reporting that menopausal women who took hormone replacement therapy increased their risk of ovarian cancer by 38 percent.   Sounds high. Hormone therapy was linked to 140 extra cases of ovarian cancer, accounting for only 5 percent of all cases in that period.  Ovarian cancer tends to be fatal given it is hard to detect.

They also stated that it did not matter what type of HRT was used. The risks of ovarian cancer were about the same from hormone therapy regardless of the duration of use, the formulation of the hormones, the estrogen dose, or how it was administered.   HRT tends to mean Estrogen. So they are probably saying Estrogen only, Estrogen and (cyclical) Progestins.

Given an increasing number of women are on Progesterone only regimes, it would be nice if they made this clear.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 6:26 pm and is filed under News. 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.