Women Using Hormone Replacement Therapy Risk Having a Stroke

Dr Francine Grodstein and her colleagues at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School collected data on 121,700 women who participated in the Nurses' Health Study from 1976 to 2004. The study looked at the relationship of hormone replacement therapy to the occurrence of stroke. Over the course of the study, 360 women who had never used hormones had stroke compared with 414 women on hormones.

This increased risk was observed in women initiating hormone therapy at young ages or near menopause and at older ages or more than 10 years after menopause." Younger women taking estrogen for less than 5 years had decreased chance of getting stroke. Age is thus a factor in the occurrence of stroke. The take home message is that if you need to take estrogen for menopausal symptoms, take the low dose for less than 5 years. Beyond that, you may be taking the risk of having a stroke.

Reference: NIH NEWS

Hormone Replacement Therapy Linked To Ovarian Cancer.

Ovarian cancer is a deadly disease. Up till now there has not been any significant test to screen for the disease in its early stages. The recent finding from a British study that appeared in the Lancet is frightening since its use may have resulted in a thousand deaths since 1991. The study was from the million women study. 30% were current users of hormone replacement therapy and 20% were past users. Current users had 1-2 fold greater risk for ovarian cancer than never user. The highest risk was for serous tumors in women with epithelial cancer, with current users at 1.53 times the risk as never users. The consensus is that current advice to take estrogen replacement therapy will not change however women should take hormone replacement therapy for a short time.