Hormone replacement debate heats up again

The news arrived like a hot flash.

Results from the first reported leg of the giant Womens Health Initiative study in July, 2002 had an immediate, staggering effect on one of the most established therapies in medicine.

The study, involving some 16,000 postmenopausal women across the U.S., showed that those taking standard hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, had a 26 per cent greater risk of developing breast cancers than those given a placebo.

It also showed a 41 per cent increase in strokes, a 29 per cent rise in heart attacks and a doubling in the risk of blood clots among the studys hormone replacement cohort. The trials were halted early because their findings were so distressing.

Immediately, the use of HRT to combat the hot flashes, restless sleeps, vaginal atrophy and muddled minds that can accompany menopause plummeted around the world. And that, it seemed, would be that.

Today, many in the medical community are questioning those seminal and settled health initiative findings and pushing to rehabilitate HRT for the indisputable benefits that the drugs can bestow.

From my perspective, the Womens Health Initiative study deserves a really hard look again, says University of Toronto neuroscientist Gillian Einstein.

For one, Einstein says, the study largely utilized a horse estrogen and a synthetic progesterone hormone replacements that many in the neuroscience community say are not the appropriate and most effective forms of treatment for humans.

She also says the drugs may have been given to many study subjects at inappropriate ages, too far into their postmenopausal stages to have reaped the optimal and safe benefits of HRT.

Einsteins biggest concern, however, is that the rapid migration of the 2002 studys negative HRT finings into the medical cannon has thrown a pall over further and needed research into hormone replacements.

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Hormone replacement debate heats up again